Journal of a UFO Investigator (21 page)

“I would have given it to you. To
her
,” I said, thinking of the moon woman. “Gladly.”

They gave no sign they'd heard. One of the two bent nimbly to the floor. A thin jointed arm lifted the flask, whisked it away, disappeared into the darkness outside the disk. The other stood alone with me, looking into my eyes.

I looked back, into the two slitted pools of darkness. There I saw, or imagined I saw, my lovely moon woman, naked and far away and grieving. Caught in those eyes, like a firefly in a jar.

I made myself smile.

I beamed into the creature's eyes the thought
Raise your hand. Touch my lips.

And it did. And I lunged—
—and bit and heard the crunch of the exoskeleton as my teeth sliced into it. The creature gave a weak
hnnnnhh
cry and tried to pull away. But my teeth were as dug in as any dog's. With my legs I propelled myself off the table, sprang onto the creature, and together we crashed to the floor.

I kept it pinned under my body, working my hands loose. Then I grabbed the thing by its narrow throat. It felt smaller, weaker, more death-rotten than the creature I'd tangled with in the lake, uncounted ash markings ago. Or was I the one who'd grown? An unfamiliar strength blazed inside me, terrible and joyous, thirsting to burn off the dry decay from which I'd come. Like a conqueror, I crouched over my victim, my knee pressed into its body above the swollen abdomen.

“Who are you?” I screamed into its face. “
What
are you?”

It tried to answer, in its
kha-kha-kha
talk. I knew it was trying to tell me, to communicate its own pain. But I couldn't understand its language; I had no patience to learn. I turned it over, took it by the neck, slammed its face into the floor. Over and over I lifted that stony triangle of a head, pounded it down. I don't think I was trying to kill the creature or even hurt it. I just wanted to break open that damned mask of a face. Liberate whatever might be trapped inside.

It didn't struggle. It barely even twitched. By the time I finished, panting and sweating and weeping, I knew it must be dead. But the face wasn't even dented. It was harder than flint, that face. Even when the feeble neck frayed and gave way, and the sticky black stuff oozed onto the floor of the disk—
—like a bad-smelling tar, and the body lay in a heap a foot or two from the now-detached head—even then I'd hardly made a mark on that face—
It's not my name my mother's calling. I run anyway.

SHE LIES ON THE FLOOR , BESIDE HER BED . MY FATHER'S IN
pajamas, kneeling. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to get here. That I hadn't been too wrapped up in the journal world to grasp she was crying for help.

She wails: “I
fell,
Leon! Leon, I
fell
!”

She's terrified. I feel her terror of her own crumbling body. She's still in her blouse and skirt; she must have been up late, about to undress for bed. Her large eyes stare blindly, focused on nothing. Where're her eyeglasses?

My father says: “Did you break anything?”

“I don't
know
,” she says. And bursts out sobbing.

She cried in this room, this afternoon, reading the “Me(g)hitabel” letter from Long Island. She cried again in the kitchen when I showed her my letter from the Bible contest; she told me afterward those were tears of joy. All through dinner she was quiet, moody. She didn't say anything about the Long Island letter. She doesn't know I know about it.

I stand in the bedroom doorway. Should I come in, try to help? Or will I be in the way? Neither of them notices me. The yellow light of the bedside lamp surrounds her fallen body like a spotlight.

He takes her by the shoulders, gently, and raises her onto the bed. That's when he notices the covers aren't turned down. “Just sit a minute,” he says. The small chair beside the bed has toppled onto the floor; he sets it upright. He helps her to the chair, pulls down the sheet and blankets, helps her back into bed.

“It
fell
. I leaned on it so I could get into bed, and it
fell
. I
always
rest on it when I go to bed and when I get up. It's never fallen before!”

She sounds hysterical. Also furious. Why has her chair betrayed her? Will everything around her now play her false, abandon her? I feel the guilt stab at me that I want so badly to win this contest, to leave this summer.

I step forward. I say, “Can I help?”

Nobody answers. They don't even look at me. Maybe I spoke so softly they didn't hear. Now I see her glasses—on the floor, unbroken. They must have flown off her when she fell. I go over, pick them up.

She lies in bed, shivering, sobbing. She hasn't tried to cover herself; must be too weak, too frightened. He sits down next to her. She reaches for his hand, grabs it. He pulls away. Then he takes her wrist, thin as a stick, and holds it. Taking her pulse?

“Anything broken?” he says.

Tears glitter in her hollow eyes. I'm still holding her glasses; I don't know whether I should offer them to her, to him, to no one. He presses and pokes at different parts of her body, to see where she's been bruised.

“It hurts
here
.” She points to her thigh.

He pulls up her skirt. On the left thigh is a huge ugly bruise, already turning purple. He presses with his fingers, and she moans.

He says: “I don't think it's broken. You'll be all right.”

“Dad,” I say.

He turns to me. He gives me a strange look, not angry, almost tender. But not really loving. Just strange. He takes the glasses from my hand and puts them on her face. She laughs.

“Archy,” she says.

She's still laughing, even while tears drip down her cheeks. In that book of theirs Archy was Mehitabel's cockroach pal. Her scribe. Her confidant. Which didn't keep her from trying to eat him every now and then.

I know my mother's talking about the Long Island letter. From his face, I see my father doesn't know. She must never have given it to him; he can't figure out why she just called him Archy. I do understand. But she won't look at me.

Yet I see her. Her puffed-up legs. Her withered, strengthless arms. Her swollen stomach—like the bellies of naked, emaciated children, in news photos of African famines. I think,
She's hanging by a thread
, and suddenly I know what's going to happen. I tell myself maybe it won't. The horrible feeling—the despair and the grieving for her already, even though she's still here, still alive—passes after a moment.

“Leon. Will you stay with me?”

He nods to her. To me he says: “Go to your room. I'll be there in a bit.”

She doesn't speak to me. When I reach the doorway, I look back. He's sitting on the bed beside her, holding her hand, singing:

That song. Whenever I hear it, I think of spiders and sticky webs I can never get off my skin. I go to my room, start to slam the door behind me. Then I catch myself; I close it gently. I sit at my desk and wait for my father.

My father knocks, then walks in. He glances at the pages of typescript I've read over and over while waiting—carbon copy on onionskin paper. The original is in an office somewhere in New York City. “That the essay you sent in for the contest?”

I nod.

“Guess they must have liked it.”

“I guess.”

He sighs. He sits down on my bed. He says: “When's the finals? This Sunday?”

“A week from this Sunday. May the fifteenth.”

My heart beats faster. I know exactly what he's going to tell me, though maybe not right away. I have to drop out of the contest, my mother's too sick. We can't leave her alone, even for a day, to go into New York City. Certainly I can't be away from her all this summer if I win, which now I'm sure I don't have a chance to. I've heard about those finals: they ask you a million nit-picky questions about the biblical book you've chosen to write your essay about. Miss one question, you're dead.

My instinct is to cover my essay, hide it from him, find a way to slip it out of sight when he's not looking. No need. It doesn't matter if he reads this; it isn't the UFO journal. That's back in my dresser drawer, under my shirts, its usual hiding place.

He says: “What was all that stuff you were hollering to yourself in here? ‘Who are you, what are you?'—something like that?”

So he was awake. We all were. In a death house, sleep comes hard.

I feel myself turn red. “I don't remember.”

“You ought to know better than to go yelling like that in the middle of the night. With Mom so sick.”

“I'm sorry.”

He glares at me; in my mind I shrink to nothing. To keep myself from vanishing, I look at my essay, let my fingertips graze the edges of its pages. This isn't like the UFO journal, doesn't come from a special place of truth as the journal does. It's in school assignment style, though in school they'll never care about what the passage of time feels like when you're in pain. But like the journal, it might pass for grown-up writing. I suppose that's why I'm in the finals. I run my fingers over the thin, crinkly sheets, hoping that'll give me strength to endure what's coming.

My father looks up toward the bookshelves over my bed, where I keep my UFO books. He pulls one down, flips through it. M. K. Jessup,
The Case for the UFO.
“You still believe in this stuff?” he says.

“Yes. I do.”

“I thought it was the Bible you were interested in now.”

“That too.”

“Jesus.” He shakes his head. I feel his exhaustion, how badly he must have needed that “Cheerio, my deario!” I want to ask who Me(g)hitabel C. is; I hold myself back. “How do you do it all?” he says.

“I don't know. I find the time.”

“You're not flunking out of school, are you?”

“You've seen my report cards.”

“Well,” he says, and I know what he's thinking. Of course I have time for this stuff. I don't have a social life: no friends, no girlfriends.

“How's your buddy Jeff Stollard these days?” he says.

I stiffen. “OK.”

“What's he doing with himself?”

“He's in eleventh grade. Same as me.”

“I
know
what grade he's in. But what's he doing? How does
he
spend his time?”

How should I know? We haven't been friends since our fight over Rosa, the summer after eighth grade. But that isn't really what came between us. Jeff just . . . changed. Taught himself the guitar. Found friends who have good voices, not like mine, so he can sing with them. When they're together, he acts like he doesn't know me. And I feel all over again the desolation of my solitude.

Just once, a November afternoon two and a half years ago . . . he came up to me, touched my shoulder. He said, “Kennedy's been shot.” As if I needed to know that, and he had to be the one to tell me. As if the gravity of death were the one thing we still could share.

“He's interested in folksinging,” I say.

“Folksinging. Not UFOs.”

When Jeff and I were friends, my father wrote him off as one more “zombie” like myself. Now we hardly speak, he'll be the model of American boyhood. “Not anymore,” I say, and it still hurts.

“Has he learned to drive?”

“He's got his license.”

“That's good. Good for him.”

I look away. I've had my learner's permit for the past four months, since the day before the journal started bubbling up inside me. It sits in my wallet unused, next to my UFO Investigators membership card. I can't ask my father to take me out for driving practice; I know the rage that'll erupt over my every mistake. So what am I supposed to do with it?

“Does Jeff go out with girls?” he says.

“Some. I think. Not much.”

“Sure don't want to tell me anything.” He gives a short laugh. “It's your mom you could always talk to. Isn't it?”

Not anymore.... I wonder if I should protest, try to soothe his feelings. He closes
The Case for the UFO
and puts it back on the shelf. “What I don't get,” he says, “is why both? Why this and the Bible? What have they got to do with each other?”

I could go off, if I wanted, on how there are UFOs in the Bible. Ezekiel's vision of the wheels. What
really
were those angels Jacob saw going up and down the ladder? But this isn't the point. “I—I—they both interest me, that's all.”

“You
believe
in the Bible?” he asks.

His voice has changed. Not using questions to prove to me how my life is all wrong, but like he's genuinely interested. Like he really wants to know.

“Sort of. I believe it's history.”