by Gregory Hill
I will say, “You clean your ears with them.”
Mother Jabez will turn to me and say, “You should only clean your ears with garlic water, son.” Then she will look disappointed.
I will persist. “A Q-tip is like a toothpick with cotton balls on either end.”
Mother Jabez will say, “We used to call them cotton swabs. Be quiet. Your girlfriend is negotiating the survival of a civilization.”
Whereupon Vero will bow gently to the Q-tip and skip back upon her wet feet to where Jabez and I will be standing. The Q-tip will remain where thon is.
*
I will say nothing.
Vero will say, “Her name is Pinta.”
“Right,” I will say.
Vero will wave jauntily at Pinta. Pinta’s upper body will sway back and forth like a piece of seaweed.
Vero will say, “She just arrived, from Pluto. Apparently, their suicide rate is off the charts. Life is cold and depressing. As you can imagine. She’s wondering if Earth would be an acceptable place for her fellow Plutons to settle down.”
I will nod knowingly, because I sort of do know what she’s talking about.
Vero will say, “Pinta says the earth is the loveliest thing she’s ever seen. She thinks it’d do the Plutons a great deal of good to get a little sun. She doesn’t want to cause any problems, but she’d like to know if she can invite the rest of her people to come stay here. Especially since the three of us,” she will move her hand in a circle to indicate herself, Jabez, and me, “are the only humans within four-thousand miles.”
I will say, “What kind of planetary scanner is she using? These parts are rural, but there’s people all over the place. Believe me, I’ve been eating their dinner.”
Jabez will say, “Not yet, there ain’t.”
I will say, “Mom?”
She will say, “The tunnels have brought us to the olden times.”
At this point, I will concede that the roller coaster has reached the top of the hill and it has flown off into the wild blue yonder.
Vero will nod enthusiastically. “She’s right, Narry. Kansas isn’t even on the map yet.”
“This is Colorado.”
“Colorado isn’t on the map, either.” She will look to Mother Jabez. “What should I tell her? Her spaceship is melting.”
To prove the point, a pointy cone of ice will snap off the top of the vessel and slide down the side to splash in the hail slush.
Questions will burst forth from my face: “What about Sandy? What about Charlene? What about the game I have to work tomorrow? Am I ever gonna get to see a coyo-doodle?”
Vero will touch my hand, “Look, babe. Did you not recently see that saber-tooth tiger eat a giant elk? Do you not at this very moment see that mammoth rolling delightedly in the hail over there? We’re here, and here’s a whole different place from where we woke up this morning.”
The Q-tip will continue waving its top like seaweed.
Vero will say, “Remember when we were at that diner a few minutes ago and it was hot and we were hungry? And all that shit happened with the waitress and the gun and that asshole guy and the other asshole guy? And then that message appeared and it said, ‘Please wink IMMEDIATELY.’ I trusted myself to trust you. It was this feeling. And those blurs, I knew they were you. I knew it and I said to myself, ‘This is Narwhal’s perfect game.’ There’s nothing to change, nothing to judge, just watch. I will not blow a whistle. I will watch and it will amuse me, like those little kids did for you at your perfect game. I winked for your blur. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them a moment later I was in that little garden. And even though that blur snooped in my diary, asshole, I forgave you. And, even though you presumably found out about The Blad, you forgave me, presumably, so we became engaged. And now we’re here, you and me and your mother.” Vero will nod in the direction of the Q-tip, “And Pinta, the fair maiden of Pluto.” Vero will place her hands on my shoulders. She will look at my eyes, say, “I adore you, Narwhal Slotterfield.”
I will say, “I adore you, Veronica Vasquez.”
We will embrace.
From the corner of my eye, I will see Jabez squirming with maternal pride.
Vero, who, one assumes, will have just needed to get that off her chest, will extract herself from my clutches and say, “I’d like to tell Pinta she can stay and that she can bring her people. She’s being very polite.”
The Q-tip will be stretching itself tall and shrinking back down, like an excited child.
Vero and Jabez will look to me. I will say to Jabez, “For a long time I had no idea why any of this was happening. Then I became of the opinion that all this time-fuckery was orchestrated so I could thwart a bank robbery in a town called Keaton. That’s a hell of a magic trick just to stop a crime that, in the big picture, doesn’t rate highly on the list of horrible things people do to each other on a regular basis. But now I’m beginning to think that this wasn’t really about me at all. I was summoned here so I could bring Vero here so she could parley with a space Q-tip. Is that the case? Because if it is, I suddenly feel a whole lot less important than I did a few minutes ago.”
Jabez will say, “A raindrop can’t form without a fleck of dust.”
After a polite pause, I will nod toward Vero and say, “You should see that raindrop swing an umbrella.”
Vero, beaming, will say, “I’m going to tell Pinta it’s okay. That she can bring the rest of the Plutons.”
I will say, “Just a minute. How do you talk to each other? Did you take Plutonese in high school?”
Vero will giggle. “You won’t believe it. She speaks perfect Spanish.”
Vero will hug Jabez and then me. Then she will stride the ankle-high melting hail toward Pinta the Plutonic Planetary Adventurer.
Pinta will bow to Vero and Vero will bow to Pinta. They will speak for a few moments. At one point, Pinta will bounce up and down several times in what approximates ecstatic joy in the body language of Plutons. Vero will hug Pinta and kiss her on the side of her upper Q-tip and then Pinta will bow and rotate and hover to her melting space ship.
Before Pinta floats up the gangplank, I will shout to Vero, “Vero! Vero!”
Jabez will put her hand on my shoulder, as if to tell me to shut up. I will ignore her. I will shout to Vero, “Tell her about winter. She needs to know about winter. Tell her it only lasts a few months.”
Vero will shrug and turn back to Pinta and, in a voice loud enough that I can hear, she will shout, “¡El invierno es frío, pero será terminado antes de que usted lo sepa!”
Darling Veronica, you know how hard I will laugh when I hear you say those words.
EPILOGUE
It seemed that, at the moment that the enormous narwhal had come to take breath at the surface of the water, the air was engulfed in its lungs, like the steam in the vast cylinders of a machine of two thousand horse-power.
—Jules Verne,
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
After Pinta the Pluton’s half-melted spaceship launches into the sky, Vero and Jabez and I will watch as the mammoth on the other side of the valley raises her furry trunk and then trumpets loudly. She will spread her rear legs and a protoplasmic bag will bulge from a hole in her belly, and then with a loud slap, the bag will slide out and fall to the ground, splashing into a crater of hail. A pink geyser will flow from the hole in the mammoth’s belly and redden the ice below her. The geyser will stop. Steam will rise.
The mammoth will kick the bag and tug on it with her trunk until the bag peels away to reveal a baby mammoth, covered in thin brown hair. After more persistent kicking, the baby mammoth will roll onto its knees and, slipping several times in the bloody hail, gain its legs and reach its wet mouth to the swollen nipple dangling from its mother’s breast.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As usual, I received a great deal of great advice from friends who read various non-great early drafts. Maureen, of course. Mom, of course. And the rest of the gang: Marri
on Irons, Eric Allen, Lucas Richards. Terry Welty for narrating the audiobook in exchange for a few crummy guitar lessons. Paul Handley was especially helpful. Special thanks go to Tony Parella, for surviving two different drafts.
MVP goes to Brett Duesing, who not only read multiple drafts, but who double-checked my time-conversions and helped me clear up some muddy scenes, all while using sentences like this: A logical argument will have clear, unambiguous language, while the narrative will have many elements open to interpretation, since the object of a narrative text is to have the readers use their imagination to create their own text, and build a subjunctive universe.
Exponential bonus to Mike Lindstrom, for double-double checking my time-conversions (the man created a spreadsheet complete with “speed of AK47 bullet” and “rotation rate of average tornado” for crying out loud) and for finding that issue with the decimal point.
It’s nice having friends.
To Kurt Svoboda, dedicated president (and sole member) of the Gregory Hill Fan Club. Thank you for your years of wacky correspondence.
Also, Mark Stevens, Carrie Breitbach, Euan Hague, Zack Littlefield, James Ford.
The gang at Genghis Kern did a terrific job on the covers.
Finally, thanks to Caleb Seeling of Conundrum Press for bringing all three of the Strattford novels together. It’s great to be back home.
New bands: Manotaur MK II, The Super Phoenixes, and The Rural Roots Ad Hoc Country-Rock-Improvisational Music Experience, whom you can see the third Saturday of (virtually) every month at Grassroots Community Center in Joes (I recommend you confirm this before you make the drive).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gregory Hill lives, writes, and makes odd music on the Colorado High Plains. His previous book, East of Denver, won the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction.
Visit his web site at www.gregoryhillauthor.com