The Truth About Martians

by Melissa Savage

  Even Eunice Snodgrass has all three

  Last year she punched me behind Corona General and took my box of Cracker Jacks and I had a bruise for a whole week. Now I just steer clear of her altogether.

  But that’s not even the worst of it all, with God I mean.

  The worst of it is, He doesn’t listen.

  Not to me, He doesn’t. Not even when it’s real important.

  Not even when I prayed and begged and pleaded and promised.

  He just took Obie away from us and didn’t even care that it broke our family into so many pieces that it will never be whole again.

  Never.

  So I say fine by me. If He’s not going to listen to me, then I’m done listening to Him. That’s why we don’t talk anymore. Not even in church on Sundays.

  But I fake it for Momma’s sake. If she knew I wasn’t speaking to God, I’d be saying Hail Marys until she was good and sure my soul was back on track toward heavenly salvation.

  I wash up with the sloppy bar of Ivory soap that’s in the dish next to the bathroom sink. Only sudsing up through J today. I figure I’ll have to wash to Z after chores anyway, so J seems good enough for churro hotcakes.

  I stare at myself in the mirror above the sink and flex both arms like a tall, proud, skinny saguaro cactus. I stand up on my tiptoes and examine my arms carefully, searching for any evidence of divine muscular intervention during the night.

  But all I see are string beans.

  Two spindly, sunburnt string beans.

  Obie had ’em. He had them when he was eleven. He had muscles, wisps, and the biggest courage part of anyone I’ve ever known. Obie could do ten pull-ups without stopping even once. And not cheating by raising his chin high, either. He did ’em with his chin straight.

  Straight.

  And when he got sick I never once saw him cry. Not once.

  That’s how brave he was.

  I brush my teeth and wet down all the cowlicks before I head downstairs.

  When I pull open the bathroom door, I hear Dibs still running his mouth in the kitchen.

  “It wasn’t like nothing I’ve ever seen before, Mrs. Affinito,” he’s going on over his shoulder while he scrubs with the Ivory at the sink.

  “Anything you’ve ever seen,” Momma corrects him.

  “Right, nothing like it,” he says. “Silver pieces of this metal that was as light as if you’re holding nothing at all…and they have these weird purple markings across ’em. But they’re not like words or letters or nothing like that, either, more like shapes, symbols…that kind of thing….”

  The kitchen is scorching. Even hotter than the upstairs.

  The black metal fan in the corner buzzes as the blades go around, pushing the sweltering air in hot circles. A small wooden radio on the bookshelf in the sitting room plays music on low. Bing Crosby is Momma’s favorite. She used to play it loud and sing and dance in the mornings while she was cooking, but I haven’t seen her do that in a long while.

  Baby Kay is talking to herself in her high chair, her wispy dark curls wet against her forehead. She’s giving a baby-gibberish play-by-play about the soggy hunks of chocolate-soaked churro hotcakes she’s chucking off the side of the tray and how they’re still there when she peeks over the edge.

  “Lolo!” she screeches when she sees me, throwing her chocolatey hands up in the air.

  “Hi, Baby Kay,” I tell her, kissing the top of her sweaty head.

  “Mo woc lat?”

  “Momma,” I say. “She wants more chocolate sauce.”

  “Bibby Boo!” Baby Kay squeals to Dibs, holding out a mushy hunk of hotcake in his direction.

  “The thinner pieces crumple right up in your hand just like paper and then straighten back out again like they were ironed with heavy starch,” Dibs keeps on while he wipes his hands on Grammy Hildago’s kitchen towel with an embroidered rooster on it.

  Grammy Hildago had an obsession with roosters same as Dibs and his Martians. Even the kitchen clock above the sink has a rooster on it. And the black iron weather vane on the top of the barn is a rooster, too.

  “And they are so strong,” Dibs blabs on. “I mean, you can’t tear it no matter how hard you try. Mac Brazel even tried to shoot a hole in one of them thicker pieces this morning and it didn’t even make a single dent. Not one single dent.” Dibs wide-eyes me. “Invulnerable…just like the fabric from Krypton that made up Superman’s suit.”

  “Bibby Boo!” Baby Kay calls again, waving the churro mush in the air.

  Dibs gobbles it up, pretending to eat her fingers, too. She squeals again, this time a high-pitched giggle.

  There’s a round burn on his palm that wasn’t there last night. It’s the exact size of a hot tobacco pipe. But I don’t ask him questions anymore. This one time, I did say something and his cheeks turned fire-engine red and his eyes got narrow and he snapped real good at me. So now I just leave it be.

  While he’s still going on about whatever fell out of the sky at Foster Ranch, he pulls out a chair from the table.

  Obie’s chair.

  I put my hand on top of his without saying anything. He pushes the chair back into its place and slips into the spot across from mine. He sets his Yankees cap on the table and licks his palm to slick down his crooked buzz cut. I sit down then, too, and give him a good hard stare.

  “Roswell Fire’s going out there today, then?” I ask him.

  His tongue reaches out over his gigantic white teeth to wet his cracking lips. “That’s right, and you want to know what else?” he whispers to me, glancing back at Momma.

  “The only thing I should be hearing over there is some thanking of the Lord for the bounty of this breakfast,” she tells us, sliding hotcakes off the griddle.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dibs says, closing his eyes and folding his hands in his lap.

  His lips move while he talks to Him.

  I know that because my eyes are cracked open. I don’t have anything to say to Him about this breakfast or anything else.

  I wonder if God strikes people down who are mad at Him. I don’t remember ever hearing anything about it in the Bible, but it’s a pretty thick book. There’s probably something in there about it.

  “Amen,” Dibs says, crossing himself.

  “Min!” Baby Kay shouts, clapping her hands high above her head in a baby hallelujah.

  I just clear my throat and sputter out a fake cough before giving my front a fake Father, Son, and Holy Ghost cross. Dibs catches me this time and eyes me suspiciously from across the table, but before he can open up his big mouth, I let him know exactly what I think of those pieces he’s going on about. “I bet you anything it turns out to be a meteorite.”

  Dibs sits up taller in his seat and puffs his chest out at me even though it’s all bone and no meat. “You don’t know nothing,” he says. “You weren’t even there.”

  “Anything,” Momma corrects him.

  “See, your momma even agrees with me,” he says. “You don’t know nothing about anything.”

  Momma smiles. “That’s enough now.” She sets a plate of hotcakes in front of each of us. “I don’t want to hear another word about it. I want you both to stay away from whatever is out on that ranch, do you hear me? You don’t need to be bothering with it. The fire department will handle what needs to be handled.”

  “Yes, Momma,” I say.

  “Dibs, same thing goes for you,” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dibs says with a full fork already in his mouth.

  I look up at her.

  Her eyes are puffier underneath than they normally are and the white is more red, too. But Momma’s got her courage part. I know it because of that horrible day. The worst day that ever was, while me and Daddy couldn’t even see straight, Momma stood strong for us all. It never seems like she’s got
the gray chasing her.

  “All right then,” she says with a sigh. “Plates in the sink when you’re done, then out to do chores.”

  “Yes, Momma.”

  “I want you to come straight inside afterward. Hear me?” she asks, pulling Baby Kay out of her high chair.

  “No. No. No!” Baby Kay protests. “Mo woc lat!”

  “The loaf of jalapeño corn bread is on the counter there wrapped up for Mordecai Lord,” Momma tells me, bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter between the baby’s messy fingers.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, watching Baby Kay bounce over Momma’s shoulder on the way out of the room for her morning nap.

  “That isn’t all I seen, either,” Dibs whispers across the table after Momma’s gone. “But Mac Brazel and my daddy told me it’s best I don’t tell nobody about that until they get someone out there to get a good look at it. So I’m not going to tell one single person. Not one single one. And that includes you.”

  Suddenly the hotcake sweetness and the bacon smokiness make my stomach feel more sick than hungry. “Fine by me.” I push my plate away. “I don’t believe you anyhow.”

  “You not eating those?” He points to my plate and sticks a fork in.

  I shake my head and watch him pile my churro hotcakes and bacon on top of his own. He takes another big bite and stares at me while he chews.

  “It’s too bad I can’t tell you, either. Because this secret is a doozy. A dooooozy!”

  “Yep, too bad.” I bite at the cuticle around my pinky nail where it’s already tearing to show him I don’t give two hoots about his doozy.

  “I mean, I’d tell you if I could, ’cause you’re my best friend and all, but I can’t. And you want to know what else? I can’t even tell you why I can’t tell you.”

  I look at him. “You can’t even tell me why you can’t tell me?”

  “That’s right.” He stabs a fork into another hotcake and tries to shove the entire thing in his mouth. And it almost fits, too. “That’s how big the secret is,” he says with his mouth stuffed and hotcake pieces flying.

  I keep biting until the cuticle part stings me and blood squeezes out from under my skin, making my mouth taste more like a pocketful of nickels than churro hotcake with Mexican chocolate sauce.

  He whistles then and a chewed-up chunk slips from between his pucker and flies across the table. “Woo-hoo, it’s even more than a doozy. It’s like…it’s like it’s a double doozy. A double double doozy, really.”

  “Uh-huh.” I suck the blood.

  Dibs stares at me for a long time and when his mouth is all done chewing, he peeks over his shoulder in the direction that Momma disappeared to and then leans in real close again. “If I do tell you, do you promise you won’t tell another living soul?”

  “Sure.” I shrug. “I promise.”

  “Swear it?”

  I roll my eyes to the ceiling. “Will you just tell me already? You know you’re going to eventually. You can’t keep a secret and you know it.”

  He checks over his shoulder one more time. “Okay, but only because you’re making me do it, not because I can’t keep a secret, ’cause I can keep one just fine.” He leans in close again and starts to whisper, his voice so quiet that his words barely make it across the table. “There’s another place. Out past old, crazy Mordecai Lord’s place and Richards’s farm, too.”

  “What do you mean, another place?”

  “Mac Brazel thinks the thing hit on Foster Ranch, went back up, and then crashed in a spot that’s more than a mile out…and it’s still sitting out there.”

  “Did he see it?”

  “Doesn’t need to,” Dibs says. “He knows it’s there. Just like me.”

  “Knows what’s there?”

  He leans in even closer this time.

  “A real live flying saucer full of Martians,” he whispers.

  My stomach lurches again. I want to go back upstairs and hide under the white sheet and pretend everything is still the same as it used to be.

  Before the sky caught fire. Before the blinking green eye. Before the whisper and the scream all at once.

  Before God took Obie away from us.

  I sit still, blinking at Dibs.

  No one says anything for a real long time while the clock ticktocks above the kitchen sink, the low hum of the fan blades buzzes in the corner, and Baby Kay is still demanding her chocolate from the back bedroom.

  “Well?” Dibs asks me.

  “Well what?” I say.

  “Well…I just told you something that could change the course of planetary history.” He waves his hands in the air. “The status of our entire universe as we know it and maybe even the future of the human race on the planet Earth. Don’t you have one single thing to say about all that?”

  “You’re telling me that out there on Foster Ranch there is a flying saucer with real live Martians inside it?”

  “I didn’t say they were alive,” he says. “They’re probably all burnt up. You know…dead.”

  I swallow hard.

  I hate that word.

  It’s the worst word in the whole entire universe.

  “You want to go and look for our own selves?” he asks. “We could ride out after you get the bread out to Mr. Lord’s place.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I asked you first,” he tells me.

  Obie wouldn’t think twice about it.

  And he wouldn’t have to search for his courage part to do it, either. He would go on a flying saucer hunt in the desert without even thinking twice about it.

  “Okay,” I tell Dibs. “After Mr. Lord’s house. But you have to go drop the bread off with me.”

  He thinks about it.

  The one thing that Dibs is more scared of than a real live Martian invasion is old Mordecai Lord.

  “Fine,” he says. “But we can’t tell another single solitary soul. Promise?”

  “You’re the one with the big mouth, not me.”

  “It’s a pact, then,” he says, spitting into the middle of his palm and holding out his hand.

  I stare at it, chewing on my bottom lip. There’s no going back on a pact sealed with a spit shake.

  Dibs stares at me. “Are we shaking on it or what?” he wants to know.

  I take a deep breath and gather up all the spit in my mouth. Then I hock a good one in the center of my palm and slap my sloppy hand against his.

  July 5, 1947—9:40 a.m.

  “H-hello?” I call, peering through a long, jagged rip in the screen door. “Mr. Lord? You in there?”

  Dibs is standing so close to me that I hear the spit croaking down his skinny throat every time he swallows.

  “I don’t know how you talked me into coming out here with you,” he says, his hot breath against my cheek. “This guy is off his rocker. Everyone knows he traps the bats from his attic and fries them up on the stove. And once those bats run out, I’ll give you one guess what he’ll be frying up next.”

  I push him back. “Will you quit breathing your churro breath on me?” I tell him. “And he doesn’t eat any bats and you know it. Now hush up before he hears you.”

  “Do you ever see him go to town?” Dibs whispers. “No, you don’t. Not even for church on Sundays. What do you think he eats stuck up in this place all by himself?”

  “You know Superman’s Secret Citadel?” I say. “Where he goes to be alone and think hard about important stuff, like how he’s going to save the world from evil? Maybe that’s what Mr. Lord is doing in there. Maybe this is his very own Super Secret Citadel. Or like the Temple of Wisdom for the governing council on the planet Krypton.”

  Dibs squeezes one eye closed and squints through the screen with the other. “Spuds told me the guy chopped up his whole family with a pickax,” he whispers.
“What if he’s sharpening up his ax in there for us?”

  “Will you stop?” I say.

  “Diego Ramos said he was a military spy in World War One who lost his mind, went AWOL, and came home and killed his whole family. Thought they were the enemy, like he was still out there fighting.”

  “That’s not true, either.”

  “Sure is,” he whispers. “People don’t make this kind of stuff up.”

  “Sounds made up to me,” I tell him.

  “They’re dead, right?”

  “It doesn’t mean he killed them, and stop saying that word already.”

  “What word?” he asks.

  “Just hush up before he hears you.”

  Dibs blows air out of his mouth. “Look at this place,” he keeps on. “It gives me the creeps.”

  “Shhh!” I give him a good, hard elbow straight to his rib cage.

  He’s right, though.

  Mordecai Lord’s house looks more like a shack than a home. But you can tell it used to mean something to someone a long time ago. Old flowered curtains hang dirty and torn in an open window upstairs, and the house used to be painted white, but now it’s weathered wood with just a few stubborn patches of white stuck to the graying boards that refuse to let go. If the house were a person, he’d be a sad, rickety hundred-and-eleven-year-old man.

  Momma makes Mr. Lord a loaf of bread every week and wraps it in a brown paper bag, and I’m the one who has to bring it out to him. Most of the time Mr. Lord just juts a chin in my direction and I do the same and that’s all that needs to be said.

  He isn’t crazy. I can tell. It’s in the eyes.

  But I have to admit, I do wonder what he eats in there, besides Momma’s weekly bread, I mean.

  I give the door another good knock. Harder this time, and I peek through the rips in the screen.

  “What is that?” I whisper to Dibs, leaning my ear toward a hole in the screen. “Do you hear that? What is it?”

  He listens. “Is that…is it radio static?”

  “Who is it?” A voice barks from deep inside the house.

  We both jump and Dibs inches backward.