I sigh and let the screen door go behind me.
“Come on!” Dibs is hollering.
Clark Kent barks after Dibs and then scrambles up from the back porch to get into the mix of it.
“Vroom! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” I shout, flying down the porch steps after him.
* * *
Dibs gives me one finger straight down.
Fastball.
I shake my head.
He gives me two fingers down.
Curveball.
I nod and wind up.
“Batta batta batta batta, sawwwing, batta!” Momma and Baby Kay sing from the back porch steps. Except Baby Kay’s sounds more like atta atta atta ing atta!
Clark Kent is in ready position at shortstop to field missed balls. Except without a batter today, he’s got nothing to field. Even so, he’s the best shortstop around.
“It’s a windup,” Dibs announces. “And a pitch…”
The ball smacks Dibs’s bare hands and bounces away behind him. “Strike one!” he shouts, shaking out his sore hands.
“Clark Kent! Heads up!” I holler out to him, and he darts toward home plate and off to chase after the ball.
Dibs spits on his red palms and wipes them on his overalls and I feel a small pain deep inside my bones. He never asks to use Obie’s glove because he knows better. But I don’t offer it, either.
It’s his.
Momma gets up from the porch swing, holding Baby Kay in her arms, and disappears into the house. By the time Clark Kent finds the ball to give back to Dibs, Momma is walking down the back porch steps in dungarees, holding my Ted Williams Little League Louisville Slugger.
“Batter up!” Dibs hollers with a big beaver-tooth grin. “It’s been a real long time since Mrs. Affinito’s been up to bat. With a prior batting average of four hundred, she has had a hit every time she’s been up to the plate. Let’s see if Mylo Affinito can strike her out this time!”
Inside the house, I see the living room curtain move to the side and Daddy holding Baby Kay as she presses two sweaty baby palms against the windowsill, singing atta atta atta ing atta!
I bend at the waist, watching for Dibs’s fingers.
One finger down.
I shake my head.
Dibs’s lips tighten.
One finger down. This time more forcefully.
I shake my head again.
Then he just throws his hands up in the air at me, which in baseball-ese means nothing but in Dibs-ese means Why won’t you ever strike her out?
“It’s a windup…,” Dibs says again. “And a pitch!”
I send my best slow pitch in Momma’s direction.
The bat makes a loud cracking sound when it finds the ball.
“And it’s a hit!” Dibs hollers, standing straight up and shielding his eyes from the setting sun. “Clark Kent!” he hollers. “Heads up! Field it, boy! Go on!”
Clark Kent is darting toward left field after the ball, while Momma rounds the homemade bases that Daddy, Obie, and I built out of old milk crates, painted white, and nailed into the dirt.
“Get it, boy!” Dibs is running toward third to get Momma out. “Hurry up, boy!”
But Momma’s too fast for all of us and makes it all the way home before Clark Kent can get the ball back to Dibs.
“And it’s another home run for Mrs. Affinito!” Dibs calls between his hands. “With a batting average of four hundred, she’s the first batter since Ted Williams to achieve this amazing feat since all the way back in 1941!”
“Woo-hoo!” I shout through cupped hands, my eyes searching for Daddy and Baby Kay in the window.
But they’re gone.
Momma jumps up and down on home plate in her dungarees and throws her arms in the air. “Four hundred!” she shouts with a wide smile.
The widest smile I’ve seen on Momma in a real long time.
At least in one year, one month, and ten days.
July 6, 1947—10:55 p.m.
Dibs and I lie toes to nose again that night, while I tell you inside my head about the flying saucer sitting out in the field, and the pieces with the purple symbols, and the green eye, and about Gracie Delgado.
Wondering if you’re still with me even though you’re not in your bed where you should be. And wondering if you’re mad about me not finishing that final comic book for you the way I promised you I would. I still haven’t finished it. All the others ended with the Affinito Brothers’ Superhero Duo saving the day.
Except the last one.
Which was the one that mattered most.
“I just don’t get why we have to still lie like this all squished and sweating when there’s a perfectly good bed right over there,” Dibs complains at my feet. “It’s just too doggone hot to sleep like this.” He punches at the flat pillow. “And this mattress is so lumpy, it feels like I’m lying on a big rock right in my back.”
“What’s the big deal? This is the way we’ve always done it.”
“But that was…before. And I don’t remember it being so lumpy back then.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, anyhow.” I turn over. “I’m the one who has to smell your funky feet. These things should come with their own toxic warning sticker.”
“My feet don’t stink worse than yours do,” he shoots back.
“Want to make a bet? Here’s what the warning sticker should read. ‘BEWARE: Breathing the noxious fumes off these funky feet can cause serious brain damage.’ ”
He grins big. “Well, your feet-stink is way more noxious than mine! Your sticker would say yours smell like a hot, noxious dog fart on a breezeless day.”
That makes us both laugh.
“I’d rather my feet smell like hot dog farts than Baby Kay’s diaper pail when Momma has to get on Daddy to empty it after three whole days. That’s capital-N noxious.”
We giggle even harder.
“Yeah, well, I’d rather smell like an old diaper pail than rotten fish after sitting in a bucket in the hot sun for three days with noxious vomit on it from a boy who just ate a bad batch of bean-and-cheese burritos with a side of gizzard covered in—”
“Boys!” Momma hollers up the stairs.
We suck air and stare wide-eyed at each other.
“Enough!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I call back.
“Sorry, Mrs. Affinito!” Dibs hollers.
We look at each other and then shove our faces in our flat pillows and laugh our heads off.
* * *
I can’t sleep.
The clock on the nightstand reads 1:00 a.m.
“Dibs,” I whisper down at him. “You awake?”
“Yep,” he whispers back.
“Where do you think they’re from?” I ask him.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Mars,” he says. “Probably they were on some kind of mission to take over our planet…our minds…you know, that sort of thing.”
I snort. “Where did you get that?” I ask him.
Dibs gives me a look like my brains really were sucked clean out of my head by the Martians out at the ship last night. “Where do you think? The Planet Comics series.”
I scoff. “Oh, the Planet Comics series,” I mock him. “The real-life guide to Martians.”
“What we really need to worry about is the second shift that might come down angry and level us with their Martian weapons,” Dibs says. “What do they want with us? And are they a hostile entity?”
I lean on my elbow. “What do you mean?”
“Like Martian mind control…or like what kinds of weapons do they have? Ray guns, phasers, stuff like that. What superpowers do they possess? Do they want to destroy mankind? Bring the human race to the very brink of extinction with a rampage of destruction a
nd all that?”
I don’t say anything.
“God made good and God made evil,” he goes on. “Whether you’re talking about Adam and Eve or Martians. The only difference is Martians are one million times smarter than us and they have powers far beyond what we can even imagine. If they want to take over Earth, believe me, they can do it.”
“That’s your comic books talking,” I tell him. “You don’t know it’s true for real life.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you said about the disk and you were wrong about that, too,” he says. “You don’t want to believe anything is true ’cause you’re scared and that’s a fact.”
“And you’re not?”
He doesn’t answer me that time.
We lie there for a long while with no one saying anything until Dibs punches at the pillow again and turns over.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” I say.
“Yeah?” He yawns.
“I hear something,” I say. “Sometimes I think I do. I mean, not like with my ears. But it’s something. Or it’s…someone.”
Silence.
“I don’t hear anything,” he says.
“No, I mean, not right now. I have been hearing someone calling for help and no one else seems to hear it.”
Dibs’s head pops off his pillow and I can feel his laser-beam gaze bore a hole straight through me.
“What do you mean? Who?” he finally asks.
“I think it might be…them,” I say without looking at him. “It’s someone or something…asking for help. My help.”
“Help?”
“I think it could be them….Th-the Martians.” I whisper the last word. “I mean, I don’t know who it is. ’Cause I don’t see anything. Except sometimes I see these outlines on the backs of my eyelids. Does that sound weird?”
“Very weird,” he says.
I sigh and flop back down on my pillow. “Forget it.”
He stays sitting up, staring at me.
“Are you messing with me?” he finally says.
“No,” I say.
“Swear?”
I sit up then, too, and look him straight in the eyes. “Swear.”
Silence.
He’s still staring.
“I’m telling you, I hear them. It’s like…it’s like it’s my own voice but it’s…it’s their message, and they’re asking for help…my help. I mean, I don’t know…I haven’t heard anything since we left yesterday…maybe they are talking to someone else by now. I hope they are, because I’m afraid that…you know…well…if they’re not talking to someone else, then…then maybe they’re not talking at all.” I swallow the lump pushing its way up my throat from my gut. “You know what I mean by that?”
Silence.
I fold and unfold my fingers, waiting for him to say something else.
“You’re not lying?”
I shake my head. “Nuh-uh,” I say. “I’m telling you the truth. Cross my heart I am.”
Dibs takes a deep breath in and then blows it out real slow, shaking his head from side to side. “Oh,” he says then, slipping his legs out from under the sheet and swinging them over the side of the bed. “I knew it. This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“What?” I ask.
“The Martians have invaded your brain and taken over your mind.” He points at me.
I push all of my breath out of my mouth and flop back down on my pillow again. “That isn’t it,” I tell him.
“How do you know?” he asks.
“First of all, I just know, and secondly, if it had happened, I would tell you so,” I say.
“Oh, you would say, Dibs, Martians have taken over my mind?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’d say.”
“Of course a Martian who has taken over your mind is going to tell me they haven’t. What am I, some kind of idiot?”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, then.”
“How can I really know that you’re still Mylo and they didn’t make the switch out there last night? Maybe that magnetic pull was some kind of Martian probe straight to your brain and they’re controlling your every thought and movement from the mother ship. How do I know that their Earth mission isn’t to spread the Purple Death—or worse—to all us Earthlings to destroy the population for total planetary domination?” He stands up now.
“What’s the Purple Death?”
“Remember in that Flash Gordon movie we seen at the Roswell Theatre, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe? Remember Ming the Merciless was sending down Death Dust to Earth, knocking people off, leaving only a purple spot on the foreheads of his victims?”
“Well, all I can tell you is that I don’t have any immediate plans for a planetary takeover today or even tomorrow. But I can’t promise anything after that.”
“Let me think for a minute.” He paces the floor beside the bed. “Tell me something that no one else but my best friend, Mylo Affinito, would know the answer to. Then we’ll be absolutely sure they didn’t take possession of your brain out there last night.”
“Why would they take my brain anyway?” I lean up again on my elbow. “I’m not the one who’s a genius, remember?”
“Come on,” he says. “Say something only Mylo and me would know.”
I take a deep breath and think hard about what to say. “Well…I want to be a pitcher when I grow up just like Spec Shea…,” I tell him while he examines me with his X-ray stare, his head to one side and his chin between his pointer finger and thumb. “And…if all the superheroes ran for president of the United States, Superman would win hands down.”
“Everyone knows that one,” he says. “Think harder.”
“And…um…,” I go on. “And…I hate tomatoes but I like the sauce. It’s ’cause I can’t even look at a cut-up tomato with its tomato guts oozing without wanting to puke. The innocent slaughter of it all. Tomato guts.” I shudder. “Disgusting.”
Dibs stands there staring and not saying a single word while he considers my answers.
“Well?” I say.
“How can you like the sauce but not the tomatoes? That’s nuts,” he tells me.
“I told you. ’Cause of the guts,” I say.
He considers me again.
“So, are we good or what?” I ask.
He slips back under the sheet, gives his pillow a punch, and smiles at me.
“Yep,” he says. “Only you would come up with something as stupid as tomato guts.”
July 7, 1947—4:55 a.m.
“I’m going to have to bring back more than just pieces this time,” Dibs tells me the next morning on the front porch steps. He finished his chores at his farm early, and then came back to wake me up for mine.
I yawn and pull on my boots. “Why’s that?” I ask him.
“Mr. Funk didn’t care two hoots about them pieces,” Dibs tells me.
“Yeah?” I say. “So what’s your plan?”
“I have to go bigger to help Daddy keep the farm,” he says. “When Mr. Funk came out this last time, he was real mad. Yelled at Daddy until he was all red in the face. Then he got into his truck and said we had thirty days to get him the money or we’d be kicked off the farm. That was two days ago. And what if…”
“What if what?” I ask.
He swallows, his eyes watering at the bottom by the rim. “What if he leaves me, too?”
A pain hits me deep inside my bones. The very same pain I felt when I saw Obie sick in his bed.
“What’s bigger than Martian ship pieces?”
“Proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“Of a Martian,” he says.
“I don’t get it. How is having proof of a Martian spaceship landing going to fix your daddy’s problems with the bank?”
“It just will, okay? I know it will,” he insists. “It has to.”
“What’s that?” I point to his front bib pocket and hold my lantern closer to him. “Those the thin pieces from the craft?”
“Nope,” Dibs says, pulling tinfoil squares from his overalls.
“That’s just aluminum foil,” I say. “What’s that for?”
“Protection,” he tells me.
“Protection from what?”
“Martian mind control, of course,” he says. “I told you they’ll probe your brain as soon as look at you, didn’t I? Don’t you pay attention? These will block the teleportation rays of their mind-control devices and keep our brains right where they belong, get it?”
The screen door opens and we jump.
“What in the world are you boys doing up at this hour?” Momma asks from the doorway as she ties her robe closed. “Your daddy isn’t even up yet.”
“We’re, ah, we are, um…meeting the other kids to play this morning,” I tell her. “Just trying to get chores done early, is all.”
“Who?”
“Diego Ramos, Spuds, and Gracie Delgado,” Dibs tells her with the foil pieces behind his back.
“Gracie Delgado?” Momma’s eyebrows go up. “Maybe you could play out back here?” she suggests. “I can make summer sausage sandwiches and sweet tea for lunch.”
“Ah.” I look at Dibs. “We, ah—”
“We’re playing out at Gracie’s aunt and uncle’s ranch today, Mrs. Affinito,” Dibs tells her.
“Who’s going to make lunch if Mr. and Mrs. Delgado are working the store?”
“We’ll eat a big breakfast,” I tell her.
“Yep.” Dibs nods. “Are you making your churro hotcakes again?”
“How about I pack up some sandwiches for you to take with you?” Momma says.
I look at Dibs, and he looks at me.
“Sure, okay. Thanks, Momma,” I tell her.
“Well then, finish up and come in for breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
Momma opens the screen door and gives me one more long look before slipping back into the house. It’s that look she has when I know she can see straight into me.
The Truth About Martians Page 7