by Ryan Gebhart
We carry the bag up three creaky wooden steps and set it at the front door of the house, where my jacket and hat are still hanging over the railing. The door has a knocker in the shape of a deerlike animal, but its nose is stubbier than a deer’s and so are its points. There are two plain-looking windows at the front of the house, and shoes, boots, and socks are left outside.
Karo’s grandma opens the door and goes into the darkness, emerging with a lit oil lantern a minute later. She stands on a chair, then climbs onto a table. On her tiptoes, she stretches her arm as far as it will reach to hook the lantern on the ceiling.
We enter an expansive room — over half the house has gotta be this room — and in the center is an oval dining table larger than any I’ve ever seen, but low enough for the Centaurians. We’re all leaving wet footprints on the polished stone floor. A very aromatic wood that smells like mesquite is burning in the fireplace in an adjacent room. It reminds me of the bonfires we used to have at my grandparents’ place.
Some moments it’s like I’m not on another planet at all.
Everyone’s going into different rooms and they’re coming out wearing dry clothes and I’m just staring at that table. I can’t get over how big it is. Are they expecting more company? No, that can’t be, because there are seven evenly spaced out chairs and — I count it out in my head — there are seven of us.
Karo says, “I’d give you something to change into, but we don’t have anything that would fit you.”
“That’s okay. All right if we sit by the fire?”
There’s a couch and an ottoman facing the fireplace. Karo takes one end of the couch and I take the other, and it creaks and groans like leather that hasn’t been broken in. I rub my hand across the armrest. It’s scaly, grayish brown, and looks like the hides of their livestock. The mantle above the fireplace is a wood carving of two fierce dragon-looking cats — or cat-looking dragons, I suppose — with their necks coiled around each other and the details are . . . Does such an animal really exist on this planet?
Karo props his feet on the ottoman that’s just a few feet from the fire. I do the same — my feet hanging over the edge — and I can already feel the water steaming off the cuffs of my pants.
His grandma enters holding a wooden pitcher in one hand and a serving tray with three mugs in the other. She places the tray on the ottoman between our feet and pours a thick, creamy pink liquid with swirls of red into the mugs, handing one to each of us. I want to ask her what it is, but she wouldn’t know how to respond.
I hold my mug by the handle and bring it to my nose. It’s warm and it’s definitely not wine and it doesn’t smell that bad. Actually doesn’t smell like much of anything. I take a sip and, holy shit, that’s strong. I cough and my eyes shut tight as it burns its way down my throat. That stuff’s gotta be close to one hundred and fifty proof.
I hold my hand to my mouth. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
She chugs hers without flinching and wipes a pink mustache away with her forearm. I’ve never seen a more smug, straight-faced look on anyone.
Karo pulls a face as he takes a sip, then sighs. He relaxes further into the couch, wiggles his toes, and puts a hand behind his head. “Every now and then, you’ve got to let the mind slow down.”
“Heck, this will make your mind stop.”
“It helps open up the stomach too.”
I take another sip and this stuff could fuel a rocket ship, but I hold up the mug to his grandma in appreciation. “It’s really good. Thank you.”
She nods, takes the serving tray, and leaves the room.
“You like it here,” Karo says.
I nod. “Feels like I’m back home. As strange as it sounds, I forgot how much I missed Texas until I came here. Even Jovas’s kids remind me of my cousins Dean and Sadie.” I touch the cuffs of my pants. They’re dry and crusty-feeling. I sit on the ottoman to dry off the rest of me.
My drink is going down easier with each sip and my mind is slowing down, but not in a drunk kind of way. I guess it’s just giving me a chance to process my thoughts at a more reasonable pace.
I say, “Sometimes I think, had I chosen to move back to Texas, would I have met someone I love as much as Jenny? Was there only one true love made for me, and she happened to live in Ohio? Did I become so obsessed because she’s the first girl I was attracted to who was also attracted to me? I’m not asking you, I’m just kinda thinking out loud. I want to get married, you know? I’ve wanted it all my life, and maybe it’s because I have a huge extended family and, like, my grandparents on my dad’s side are so genuinely in love with each other it’s ridiculous. Ever since I was a kid, I looked at Grandma Karen and Grandpa Paul and thought, I want that. I don’t think Jenny wants any of that. Or if she does, she wants it with Mark and not me. She tells me she loves the both of us, and I know for you guys it’s no big deal, but I . . . I just can’t share somebody. How would that even work? Like, would we each marry her in separate ceremonies? Would I have her on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Shugar would have her Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and Sundays would be our designated Orgy Day? No. That’s just . . . that’s too weird for me. And I know you’re going to tell me to find somebody new, but Jenny’s just so perfect for me even though she’s not.”
Karo sets his drink on the floor, puckers his lips, and sits up, slapping his palms on his thighs, and I’m waiting for him to respond with something profound.
He says, “Dinner’s ready.”
That didn’t take long, which for some reason isn’t a very reassuring thought.
On the table, seven huge saucers have been placed, each with a whole arsenal of utensils, some familiar and others that look like medieval torture devices.
Karo gestures for me to sit, then goes into the adjacent room where the rest of the adults are. The chair is really small and my knees scrape the bottom of the table.
Jovas’s two sons grab the closest chairs to me and drag them over so we’re barely inches apart, then they bring over their saucers and utensils. Little Dude links his arm with mine and rests his head on my elbow.
“Hey dere, Widdal Wuud.” He says it a couple more times, slower, like he’s practicing.
Jovas and his girlfriend, then Karo and his grandma come out in a single file like some kind of procession, each carrying a gigantic serving platter as sterling white as the slaughterhouse’s exterior. The smells emanating remind me of the killing floor. On the far end of the table from me, Jovas places a gleaming heap of what looks like bleach-white spaghetti as thick as summer sausage — the intestines. Next to it, his girlfriend sets what has to be the brain — a gooey, amorphous mass of gray lumps. Karo’s carrying the two smallest platters, balancing one in each hand. The first one has these two glistening, veiny gray egg shapes almost as big as watermelons.
“Daaaaaamn, that dude had some big balls.” I force out a laugh, trying to make this situation funny even though it’s becoming less and less so by the minute. Because what the hell did I get myself into? Is Karo really a good enough friend for me to endure this dinner? We’ve only hung out twice.
But it’s his second platter that gets me. I can literally feel my stomach shrink just looking at those softball-size eyeballs rolling around in a puddle of their own juices. When they settle, one of them is vacantly staring right back at me.
Everything they’re bringing out is uncooked.
And then right in front of me, Karo’s grandma sets the largest platter of them all, and it’s for the beast’s heart. Just one big knot of muscle that’s gotta weigh at least forty, maybe fifty pounds. The tubes where the blood pumps in and out have been flattened, and they’re looking at me like rubbery frowns. If I wanted to — which I don’t — I could fit my whole arm up one of them. Think of all the hundreds of gallons of blood that got pumped through that triangular slab of meat every day.
No. Don’t think about it. Think about anything else.
I take my mug and knock back half of my drink a
nd savor the fire coating my insides. Karo once told me I wouldn’t have the stomach for what they eat and he was right, but he invited me into his home with his family and I can’t refuse their food. That would be insulting. I will eat what they serve me.
But what if I do eat it and then I throw it all up right in front of them? That would be far more insulting.
I finish my drink with a gasp. My stomach has calmed and opened up some. In front of me is the greatest bounty of the freshest meats chosen by me, killed not even two hours ago. It glistens beneath the dancing light of the lantern.
Let’s do this.
Everyone takes their seats except for Karo’s grandma. She gestures for me to give her my saucer. She sticks a large three-pronged fork into the heart and cuts me off a hearty — heh — portion. A quarter of a testicle. Three thin slices of brain. A pile of intestines. An entire eyeball that’s got chunks of pink gore hanging off the back.
She hands it all back to me. The saucer itself weighs twenty pounds. The food has gotta add at least twenty more.
“Thank you,” I say, giving her a humbled, honored nod.
Not-as-Little Dude hovers over my food. He pokes the eye, and it rolls off the intestines to the edge of my saucer. He laughs. That drink is definitely kicking in now because that eyeball doesn’t intimidate me anymore. It’s looking at me like it’s simply saying hello. Now I’m just wondering what it tastes like.
“The guest of honor is entitled to a whole eye,” Karo says as his grandma is handing him his helping.
“Who gets the other?”
“The rest of us share it.”
Man. I’ve never been this hungry in my life. It’s like everything from my neck to my pelvis is all stomach now, just one hollow and rumbling cavity begging to be filled. But I wait until Karo’s grandma finishes handing out everyone’s portions.
Across from me, Jovas’s girlfriend begins, taking a slice of brain with two wooden sticks as if it were sashimi. I follow her lead. I hold up a wriggling pancake-size cut. She sucks her slice into her mouth whole, right off the sticks. I take a bite of mine. It gives no resistance between my teeth and falls apart like warm Jell-O, filling my mouth with a faint taste of turkey and maybe shrimp that’s been whipped into a froth.
Jovas covers the other eye with a rag, then he stabs the back of it with a pointed metal tube. He takes the eye by his long fingers, holds it over his plate, and squeezes. Gelatinous clear lumps fall through the tube and over his food.
They pass the contraption around the table, squeezing its contents as if it were a condiment. By the time the eye reaches Little Dude, it looks like a dead jellyfish or a wet and empty plastic bag. He swallows the remnants without chewing.
Before I eat each item, I watch how they do it. Karo eats testicle with his hands. Not-as-Little Dude makes little strips of heart that he stuffs into the intestines. Karo’s grandma cuts everything up into small pieces and mixes it together.
I don’t pay attention to what it is I’m shoveling into my mouth, but it’s got this blend of earthy, grassy tastes that’s crashed right into the sea, and I bet it would impress any food critic. It’s so simple, yet so intense. It’s billions of years of evolution served unapologetically raw.
I crunch down on something hard and pull out a piece of the animal’s skull.
Except for the clinking of utensils and the smacking of lips, the feast goes on in silence for twenty minutes. Jovas’s kids have finished their dishes and licked them clean. Their mom is leaning back in her chair, her crossed feet resting on the table. Karo is rolling a joint. I look down. My belly is more distended than I’ve ever seen it, and all that’s left on my saucer is the eye.
Damn. How much did I just eat?
I say, “I don’t even know how I’ll be hungry for Thanksgiving tomorrow.”
I pick up the eye, the whole thing resting in my open palm from my fingertips to my wrist. How am I supposed to eat this? Do I just bite into it like an apple?
Karo’s grandma comes over to me as if sensing my confusion. She takes a couple utensils, puts them in my hands, and with her hands on top of mine, we cut it in half. Its contents ooze out like a poached egg.
I scoop it up with a spoon and a rush of rich and salty and fatty flavors that I’m not worthy of fills my mouth. It’s like warm melted butter blended with a puree of crab legs and oysters. It’s as if the beast had an entire ocean of flavors stuffed away in his eyes.
“You . . . like?”
She looks at me with a slight tilt to her head. She really didn’t speak these words, more like coughed them out.
I mirror her stern glare and give a stoic nod. “I like.”
She returns to her chair, and for the first time since we’ve met, there’s a hint of a smile breaking across her lips, and I can tell she’s fighting it down. Slowly, her eyes begin to shut, her head tips forward, then she snaps back awake with a startled snore.
Jovas stacks all the serving dishes and brings them outside. He takes out our saucers on his second trip. Everyone’s getting up, yawning, stretching out. I follow them outside, and Karo lights up his joint with one hand, scratching his belly with the other.
We take a seat on the front porch swing — Karo on one end, me in the middle, and his grandma on the other end. Their feet dangle from the edge, but my knees are nearly up to my chest. I rock us back and forth with my feet, and the chains holding us up groan from our weight.
Jovas and his girlfriend are placing the serving platters and saucers on the lawn in front of us. They sit on the steps and watch as their children toss something back and forth, but it’s too dark to tell exactly what.
Low and slender silhouettes appear from the darkness, scavenging on the scraps in the dishes while making greedy raccoon sounds. Maybe it’s the dragon cats depicted on the mantle, but no one other than me is paying attention to them. It’s as if they’re as common as sparrows and squirrels are to me. I lean forward and squint, but they’ve already licked the dishes clean and are scattering back into the fields.
Jovas squeezes his way in between me and Karo.
Alpha Centauri B has set, and despite the lack of city lights, the sky is still anything but black. A large swath of darkness has been split open by a glowing milky smear, and unlike the small group of clouds rushing past it, it stays perfectly still. Just like how Jenny’s mom described the Milky Way.
Karo passes Jovas the joint, then points. “Do you see the yellow star that’s beneath the cluster shaped like a semicircle? The bright yellow one?”
My eyes sift through the stars until I find the one he’s talking about. Jovas hands me the joint, and I take a little hit. “Yeah,” I say.
“There you are. That’s your sun, four and a half light-years away. You’re there right now, but you’re four and a half years younger.”
It’s just a twinkling light in the sky, no different from any of the other stars. We had been searching for heaven in religion for years, and we were right smack in the middle of it all along.
What was I doing four and a half years ago? That would put me at age thirteen, the phase when I was into Minecraft and on my fourth reading of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Raya hadn’t yet declared war on us, but I’m pretty sure we were in the middle of some other war. And Jennifer Novak was just another cute girl from the swim league at Brandywine.
I look over. Jovas has his head resting on Karo’s shoulder. He deeply inhales his boyfriend’s scent. Their fingers are intertwined. They’ve probably never experienced war in their lives.
“Thanks for dinner,” I say.
A hand rests on my thigh. Karo’s grandma is looking at me, and her eyes have lost that hardened edge. “You’re welcome,” she says, and the thing is, I do feel welcome. I’m gazing at my sun from four and a half light-years away, but I couldn’t feel more at home. Tears are welling in my eyes, not because it’s all so beautiful — though it really is — but because humankind isn’t ready for something as simple and mundane as dinn
er.
“Why is it so hard for us?” I say. “Why do we go to war when we could be discovering new cultures and new foods? Making new friends?”
I know Jovas is going to say we’re not ready before he opens his mouth.
“But we are ready,” I say. “Even though I’ve seen your teeth and how you process your livestock, I’m a human and I’m still here talking to you. Karo’s right, you know he is. We are ready for you to come to Earth.”
I turn to Karo and Jovas on my left side, then Karo’s grandma on my right. They’re all looking peacefully at the Milky Way.
I say, “I can’t go back and change what happened this past summer in Raya. But if there’s ever any hope that Jenny will get better and that I’ll get better, this war has to stop.”
They’re still not saying anything. I get up from the porch swing and turn to them.
“We need you to.”
It’s like they’ve gone off into a trance, the pupils of their massive doll eyes dilated, their heads slightly canted.
I say, “Everything might be fine and dandy on Pud Five, but it really sucks on Earth. What am I supposed to do? Go back there and accept the fact that hundreds of thousands are going to die? Watch as Jenny lives out a life without me?” Their drugged-up expressions haven’t changed. “What is it?” I turn around and nearly flip over the waist-high railing.
All the stars and the surrounding glowing gases of the Milky Way have busted free from their once-fixed place in the sky. They’re moving so quickly above the tree line, it’s like they have someplace important to be. The entire band of light, which took billions of years to create, is being split apart, then brought back together as if it were dough. More stars come racing in from overhead, and together they do a complete three-sixty and so many other complicated things that it’s hard to breathe. This isn’t an illusion — it’s a choreography or a symphony, and someone is holding the baton.