Only Alien on the Planet

by Kristen D. Randle

  Maybe I should have let well enough alone.

  Our Friday-Night-Christianson/Pretiger-Lonely-Hearts-Outings at the Film Society turned out to be very culturally broadening. In those first few weeks, we'd seen The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—which I'd already seen once with Paul when we used to stay up for the Midnight Movie Classics of the Week—It Happened One Night, and Meet John Doe. My mom always made a very big deal about these films when we told her about them; my mother's Favorite Movie is just about anything made before 1953. When she heard we were going to see The Heart is a Lonely Hunter—which I told her about one morning as she was heading out the door—she clutched her heart and rolled her eyes and generally let me know it was going to be a winner, without managing to communicate anything remotely specific.

  So we were kind of looking forward to seeing it. But on that Friday morning, both Charlie and James came down with the flu. Kaitlin and Melissa, of course, were suddenly overcome with fits of Florence Nightingale. Caulder and I should really have been more sympathetic than restless, but that's not the way it worked out.

  “Look,” James groaned finally. “All we want to do is lie around here and watch TV, and you know how superior you guys get when the TV's on. So why don't you just make us all happy and go away?”

  “We have actually been paid,” Kaitlin informed us, “for taking care of people far more helpless than these two. It's not like we need you two around supervising.” To prove a point, Melissa stuck a thermometer into Charlie's mouth. “Go,” Charlie mouthed around it, “before they kill us.”

  So we went.

  “So,” Caulder said as we got into the car. “We could take Smitty.”

  That was kind of a shocking idea.

  “To the movies?” Mrs. Tibbs repeated, standing in the doorway, looking more than slightly incredulous.

  “Sure,” Caulder said. “We're just going up to the university, and we thought Smitty might like to tag along. It's no big thing. It's just Friday night.” He flashed her the patented Caulder-is-so-mature smile.

  “Caulder,” Mrs. Tibbs said quietly, “I think you're forgetting that Smitty has some very serious limitations.”

  “I never forget that,” he said.

  “I appreciate the interest you've taken in Smitty, honey. But I have to be honest—I'm just not comfortable with the idea of him going with you—not that I don't trust you, Caulder. I just don't think you understand what can happen.”

  “We'll take care of him,” Caulder said simply. “He's eighteen, Mrs. Tibbs. He's an honor student.”

  Mrs. Tibbs shifted her weight and sighed, looking off over our shoulders into her own thought. “John,” she started to call, leaning back into the hall. But she bit the name off, murmuring to herself.

  “I really don't think you have to worry. He goes to high school with us every day,” Caulder said, sounding very reasonable.

  She took a deep breath. “Well—”

  “We won't be back too late,” Caulder said. “We won't take him out anywhere afterward.”

  “How much is it?” she asked, and then we knew she was going to let him go.

  “It's just the Film Society,” Caulder told her. “It's just a buck and a half.”

  Ten minutes later, Smitty was belted into the backseat of Caulder's father's car, going to the movies just like a normal person. Whether he was pleased about it or not, who could tell? It was strange for us, having him back there, and we were a little self-conscious at first. But we loosened up after a bit; he was so quiet, we nearly forgot he was there.

  We had to park down the hill from campus and hike up to the building, and then we had to wait in line with three hundred other people in a narrow hallway for forty-five minutes. The whole time Smitty Tibbs stood beside us, pretending he was alone in the world. If that's what he was doing.

  Finally, we paid for Smitty's ticket, herded him along into the auditorium, found three seats together, sat down and broke out our goodies. I leaned over and put a Snickers on the arm of Smitty's seat, being careful not to touch him, and then the lights went off and the movie started.

  I guess I should have made Mom tell me more.

  Alan Arkin plays the main character, a deaf-mute man who takes a room with a Southern family during the Depression. The family is down on their luck, the father disabled and money scarce, which is why they had to take in a boarder. It's a movie about poverty and anger and handicaps and love—the spiritual and physical traps human beings can fall into. Not what you'd call light entertainment.

  I was uncomfortable at first, wondering if the handicaps of the protagonist were going to upset Smitty. But when he didn't show any signs of distress, I forgot all about him and lost myself in the story. That's what I love about good films and good books— you can climb right into them and be there. I just hate it when I'm doing that, and then somebody butts in and messes with my concentration.

  Which some idiot did right in the middle of the climax of the movie. An innocent person had been brutally hurt, and Alan Arkin was the only one who knew. He had to get help, but no one could understand him—he was trapped inside of that body, and the horrible sounds that tore their way out of his throat took you by the heart and ripped you apart. It was not the best time for somebody to decide they needed to climb over me to get to the aisle.

  “Where's he going?” Caulder whispered.

  “What?” I snapped. But I noticed that the seat on the other side of Caulder was empty. So my idiot had been Smitty.

  “Who knows?” I hissed back. “To the bathroom. How should I know?”

  “Yeah, maybe that's where he went,” Caulder said doubtfully. He craned his neck around, looking back toward the door. Then he shrugged. “He's probably just…” He shrugged again and settled into his seat.

  I tried to get back into the movie. But I kept waiting for Smitty to come back, and so did Caulder. Every so often, we'd look at each other and feel uncomfortable.

  Then it was over. “I'm exhausted,” Caulder said, and I could only agree. We looked for Smitty as we left the auditorium. There were hundreds of people waiting for the next show, lines looped all up and down the hall. We didn't see Smitty there. Caulder checked out the men's room. No Smitty. We went through the whole building, and then we decided he must be waiting for us at the car. So we went all the way down to the parking lot, only to find out that he wasn't there—so we had to go back to the building.

  By this time the halls were empty and the next show was running. Caulder talked the kid at the door into letting him go in to see if maybe Smitty had wandered back in there, looking for us. Which he evidently hadn't.

  We checked out every crevice of the building, the entire grounds around the building, half the campus, and then we went down and got the car. We drove home slowly, watching both sides of the street all the way—no Smitty.

  “His mother's gonna freak,” Caulder muttered. He turned the car around and drove back to the university another way. Then we started driving a grid—back and forth, every possible street. It was getting very late. And Caulder was starting to get seriously scared. I was worried too—but Caulder was nearly frantic.

  Well, we finally did find Smitty. He was walking down our own street, just passing in front of Caulder's house. Caulder pulled in hard against the curb, jumped out of the car, came around and put a hand out. Smitty stopped. Then Caulder started yelling, not so loud Mrs. Tibbs would have heard it, but loud enough that I could hear, outlining in great detail the extent of our search and generally sounding a whole lot like my father.

  “You just don't do that to people,” Caulder said, finally losing some steam.

  But Smitty Tibbs hadn't heard a word of it. Caulder stepped out of his way, and Smitty went home.

  Then Caulder got back into the car and slid down in the seat, his head back against it, sighing. He looked at me. Neither of us said anything. He started the car, backed, pulled into his driveway, and turned off the ignition, all without a word.

  “You wa
nt to come over?” I asked him. I was feeling kind of worn out and cross. Maybe a little tired of the game.

  “It's late,” he said. “If my sisters are still over there, send them home.” We got out of the car. He stood there on the driveway, looking over toward Smitty's house. A light had just gone on upstairs. “Sometimes,” Caulder said, “I think this is going to drive me crazy. He's probably sitting up there in his room, making faces at himself in the mirror and laughing his head off.”

  “Why do you do this?” I asked him. “It's not your job to babysit Smitty Tibbs. Why don't you just let him take care of himself?”

  He turned to me and blew a little cloud of steam into the night air. “I suppose you think we should have just gone home and left him?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.” I stuck my hands into the pockets of my jacket. “It's just—who made you his keeper? I mean, we could have just gone to the movie without him, tonight. It was your idea to take him. What did you think was going to happen?”

  “I don't know,” he said. “Maybe I just thought he'd like a little chance. Just to live, you know? I'm not his keeper.” He looked back over his shoulder at Smitty's house. “I'm his friend.”

  I don't know what went through my mind just then—a thousand things mostly having to do with my concept of friendship, and the fact that, I guess, I never really thought of Smitty as an actual human being. And maybe some jealousy. “I thought, to be friends, you had to really know each other. A relationship,” I said finally. “Like you and me.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well, it's never going to be like you and me, is it?” He sighed, and mist curled around his face. “I can't explain it to you,” he said to me. “How can you explain why you love somebody?”

  “You love him? You don't even know him. You don't even know if there's anybody in there to love.”

  He laughed. “Do you ever really know anybody?” he asked, and I shivered in the dark. “Go home,” Caulder said. “I'll see you tomorrow. I'll watch you to your door.”

  He was still standing there when I climbed my steps and put my hand on the knob. I gave him a little wave. “And I love you too,” he called to me. He was gone before I could answer.

  The girls were gone. Only Charlie was still up, all wrapped up in his plaid robe with my mom's slippers on his feet. He was sitting at the piano as I locked the door behind me, softly playing the Adagio from Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique.

  I took off my coat and hung it in the closet, then I bumped him over and sat beside him on the bench.

  “Don't get too close,” he warned, leaning away so he shouldn't breathe on me.

  “Mom and Dad home yet?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  I sighed. “This is not cheerful music,” I told him.

  “It's loving music,” he said, closing his eyes as he played. “It's gentle.”

  As he played, I looked around the sterile living room. “I wonder if this could ever end up seeming like home,” I said softly.

  He looked at me and smiled. “As the prophet said—'no man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom…'”

  “Oh, that's helpful,” I said, and I got up.

  “Be happy, Ginny,” he told me. He dropped his hands into his lap and turned to face me. “This is home. This is where we are. This is the place we store our love. You just have to be content to be in your own skin, that's all. And I think I'm going to throw up. Again.”

  He slid off the bench and headed for the bathroom. I listened to make sure he was going to make it, then I took one more look around. I started shutting off lights and checking windows. I'd wanted to ask Charlie a question. I'd wanted to ask him—"Do you think we really know each other? Any of us?”

  I left one light on, the little lamp on the piano, so my parents would have something warm to come home to.

  chapter 5

  So, the very next afternoon, here's Caulder, squinting up against the sunlight at Smitty's curtained windows and telling me, “I think it's worth another try.”

  It was actually funny to me at that point. “Sure,” I said. “We had such a great time last night.”

  “Ginny,” Caulder said, “I'm serious. I've been thinking a lot about that stuff you said the other night, when Smitty walked out on us at his house. I was thinking—he walked out on us again at the university, didn't he? I mean, we don't know why he did it, but he did do it, and I believe there had to have been a reason. Maybe we could figure it out if we gave it another try. It might really turn out to be important.”

  So on Friday night, while everybody else went to a Dave Gruisin concert in the city, Caulder and I went to Smitty's for math; on the way out, we mentioned to Mrs. Tibbs that we were going to the movies again, and said we'd love to take Smitty along.

  She didn't argue at all. It struck me that Mrs. Tibbs might actually be seeing this as an advantage; when Smitty was with us, she could do whatever it was she did without feeling guilty. So, one minute, Smitty was standing in his front hall; the next, he had his coat on and was climbing into the back seat of the car. No one had asked his opinion.

  We kept a close eye on him this time. Even after we were sitting down, Smitty carefully between us, we were uneasy.

  The movie was East of Eden—John Steinbeck and James Dean. That—and the fact that my mother thought this was a great classic—was the sum total of what I knew about it—which was enough, I could have guessed it wasn't going to be real funny.

  What an understatement.

  East of Eden turned out to be a sort of Dust Bowl Cain and Abel story—set in the rural American Midwest about sixty years ago. The Abel brother was good and virtuous and hardworking, and everybody loved him. The Cain was misunderstood, and therefore resentful, envious, and violent. One perfect—the other not able to please anybody, including himself. You didn't really get to side with anybody because you had to grieve for all. Fun. A real fun experience.

  About two-thirds of the way through, there was an accident, and the Abel brother was killed. That was when Smitty decided to leave. We couldn't do anything but follow him, trying to keep up—out of the building, down the hill—Caulder all the time saying, “Wait up. Will you wait up?”

  But Smitty was gone. He was disappearing into the shadows at the foot of the parking lot when Caulder finally came to a stop, puffing. I had started slowly across the lot toward the car, watching them from above.

  “Smitty,” Caulder yelled.

  Smitty didn't stop.

  “Fine,” Caulder called. “What am I going to tell your mother?” But he might as well have been calling to the moon.

  “Okay,” he finally shouted. “So, you're upset. So, you're mad at us. We get the message, okay? “

  Smitty Tibbs stopped. Stopped dead in his tracks.

  He was suspended in the shadows. Still. Completely silent. Then, all at once, he turned and started back up the lot toward the car, as if he'd suddenly remembered where he was going. Caulder glanced back at me, but I could only shrug.

  Then Caulder headed for the car himself. I was nearly there, so I stopped and waited for them. I saw Smitty clearly as he toiled on up the slope and passed through the brightness below the streetlights.

  I saw him very clearly, in fact.

  “Come on,” Caulder said, closer to me than I'd expected. He took my arm and steered me over to the car.

  I'd seen glittering tracks of silver on Smitty's face in that half-light. I felt like somebody'd knocked the wind out of me.

  Smitty was tucked away in the shadows of the backseat by the time Caulder opened my door for me. I climbed in and put the belt on, my heart thudding, and then I sat with my hands in my lap, feeling very chill and almost dizzy.

  Caulder threw himself into his seat and jammed his belt into place. “I swear to you, Smitty,” he said, adjusting the rearview mirror. “Your mother would literally kill me if she thought I let you get away with that. Do you know what can happen to people
walking around alone in the dark in this town? You get away with an awful lot, buddy, but you're not going to pull this kind of thing on me.” He jammed the car into gear, pulled out of the lot, and onto the street.

  There wasn't a sound from the back seat.

  I couldn't say anything. I was still too cold. Caulder gave me a curious look. I couldn't meet his eyes.

  Smitty Tibbs had just graduated from Interesting Problem to full, frighteningly real, Human Being.

  Caulder pulled up into his own driveway, and I was out of the car before he'd pulled on the parking brake. Smitty took the opening and flew—gone before Caulder could open his own door. I watched him disappear across Caulder's lawn, his shadow flitting behind him, and then I leaned over, put the back of my seat right and looked at Caulder.

  Caulder slammed his palms against the wheel.

  “So you were right,” I said to him. “You should be happy.”

  He looked at me. “No,” he said. “We didn't learn anything.”

  “Caulder,” I said softly. “Didn't you see it?”

  “See what?” he asked. “I see that The Alien can't sit through an entire movie. I see that some people don't have any sense at all—he doesn't even know the way home.”

  “He got home okay the other night,” I pointed out gently. “Caulder—”

  “Maybe you're right,” he said, not hearing me. “Maybe I've spent a lot of years for nothing.”

  “Caulder—” I said again. He shook his head and glared at me. I held up one hand, asking for just a tiny break in his frustration.

  “What?” he said finally.

  “Caulder,” I said gently, “He was crying.”

  Caulder's face didn't change much at all but suddenly he was staring. He'd gone sort of hollow, moving slowly past shock and into disbelief.

  “I saw it when he was coming to the car.”