Journal of a UFO Investigator

by David Halperin

  I’m going to Carthage University, in upstate New York. That’s the same college my parents went to, where they met before the Second World War. Mrs. Colton went there too. Her name wasn’t Colton in those days. I think she and my father were boyfriend and girlfriend before he met my mother. I think they must have kept something up even after he got married, even after my mother got sick. Maybe especially after she got sick.

  Did I ever tell you about the letter that came for my father the spring before my mother died? The one signed “Me(g)hitabel C.” that she opened and that sent her into tears, her last spring on earth? Of course “Me(g)hitabel C.” was Meg Colton.

  I suppose, out of loyalty to the dead, I ought to hate Mrs. Colton. But mostly she just bores and irritates me.

  First thing, when Dad introduced us last March, she squeals at me: “Why, you’re the spitting image of your mother!” I think she’s imagined ever since that I am my mother, come from the dead to judge her for what she did, fool with my husband while I was dying. That’s why they were so eager to send me back to Israel this summer, to get me out of their way, so I won’t make them feel guilty for what they’re doing. Were doing—

  Of course.

  That’s why he let me go last summer.

  So I wouldn’t be around, so I wouldn’t know about him and Mrs. Colton.

  He could have stopped me. He knew she was going to die. I knew too, but I couldn’t admit it, I wanted so bad to get out of that house. He could have sat me down, said, Son, you won your Israel trip fair and square, but you can’t go. Not this year. Next summer you will, yes, I promise you that, but now you can’t, because she’s very sick, and if you go, you’ll never see her again, and I won’t let you carry that guilt, that pain. I would have been mad; I would have hollered; I would have argued. But I would have stayed if he’d said so. He didn’t. Now I know why.

  I’m a cynic these days, Julian.

  You would have appreciated that when we first met. You were pretty cynical yourself, if my journal is any witness. But I don’t think you are anymore. Now I think you’ll be disappointed in me. I can’t help it, though. This is how I am.

  Amazing. This letter has gone on for pages, and I’ve hardly mentioned UFOs.

  I haven’t stopped believing. UFOs are real. I know that, as truly as I know you’re real, Rochelle’s real, the three men are real. It’s just that I no longer believe—how can I put this?—that they’re accessible. They’re in the sky; I’m on earth. I used to think, if I researched them, investigated the sightings, learned the physics of how they fly, I might be transported with them into the skies. Last summer I was transported, sort of. I flew, I really did, to Israel and back. But then I crashed. I’m still digging myself out of that wreckage.

  Maybe UFOs will work for you. They won’t for me anymore. I have to find another way.

  A few nights ago I had a strange dream. It’s still with me; I can’t get it out of my head. Maybe that’s why I’m writing to you now, after putting it off for so long.

  It was the night of August 17. That’s one year to the day after my mother’s death, though it was two weeks later I found out she’d died. The three men in black were in the dream, threatening me, warning me. Saying over and over, “Fog, thy name is UFO!”

  Their faces were covered with black silk. No trace of any eyes or nose or mouth underneath. I realized, even in the dream, they must already be dead. It was one of the scariest dreams I’ve ever had, but I wasn’t scared. Not then, not afterward. The first thought that came to me when I woke up was how appropriate it is, that fog and UFO share two out of three letters.

  Well, Dr. Freud, what do you make of that?

  Here’s what I think: when we watch the sky, we’re looking in the wrong direction. The real mystery is right here, among us. It’s the mystery of boys and girls who become men and women, whether they want to or not; and sometimes they don’t marry at all, at all—as in that silly old song Rosa and I sang to each other. But mostly they do marry, sometimes the right person but most often the wrong one.

  Then they get sick. Then they die. And the rest of us go on living, because we have to.

  What do you think, Julian? Shall I take my UFO books with me to Carthage? Just on the off chance I might change my mind, find I still have energy for UFO work, when I’m not studying or writing papers or—what the hell, why not?—trying to find a girl to go out with?

  No. I’m not going to take them. But I’m not going to throw them out either, the way my father wants me to. They stay right here in my room, on the bookshelf above the bed where I’ve slept since I was five years old and we moved into this house. They’re clumsy books, even silly most of them. But they’re part of me. I won’t deny them.

  You’re part of me too, Julian. That’s why I’m writing to you now, before I leave for college and become a different person, someone I can’t imagine.

  I don’t have your address, so I don’t know how I’m going to send this letter. Maybe just: “Sgt. Yehoshua Margaliot, Israel Defense Force, Israel.” Sort of like “Santa Claus, North Pole” don’t you think? Yet the letters always seem to get there.

  I think this one will too.

  Be well, Julian. Take care of yourself. Write soon.

  When you see my old pal Rachel, tell her I said hello.

  Your friend,

  Dan

  CHAPTER 46

  September 14, 1967

  Dear Dan,

  Or “Mr. Shapiro,” as I like to think of you. Don’t worry—I won’t try to call you Danny.

  You needn’t have worried, either, about your letter reaching me. Whatever you write, whatever you say, whatever you think will always find its way to me if you want it to. And you needn’t concern yourself with whether I’m real, as your allusion to Santa Claus would perhaps suggest. I am entirely real. So is Rochelle. You’ve always known that.

  In other words, yes, Virginia, there is a Yehoshua Margaliot.

  Still a sergeant in the Israel Defense Force, unscathed by this awful war, which I’m delighted we won but bitterly sorry it happened at all. It shouldn’t have happened. That night by the Makhtesh when you and I drank beer together and talked about plucking the cancerous thread from the fabric of time, I would have sworn nothing like this would ever happen again. But the Makhtesh is empty now. Not only is the disk gone—you know better than anybody, you were the one who flew it—but the tower it rested on has vanished. In a red mist, just as it came. The Makhtesh is nothing anymore but a crater in the desert.

  And we’ve been through one more war.

  Your friend Sandra Gilbert is right. They’re all wrong, all terrible. They don’t accomplish anything except that if you’re lucky, you’re still alive when they’re over, which is a real, if transitory, achievement. I was at the Wall with the paratroopers the day we took the Old City, and I saw all the praying and the crying. I did some of it myself, though I’ve never been what you call a religious man. But of course, as you say, you won’t find me in any of the photos. I’m not the sort of fellow who tends to appear on film.

  And yes, Rochelle and I are together once more. (Though I think I will discreetly dodge your question about our sleeping arrangements.) We didn’t meet on that splendid day you wrote about, of Jews and Arabs dancing together in the streets of Jerusalem. I wasn’t even in Jerusalem that day. I’d been assigned to guard duty in Nablus, one of the Jordanian towns we’ve conquered and now are going to have to occupy, for longer than any of us cares to think. Nobody’s dancing in the streets there.

  How Rochelle and I found each other—well, I’ll get to that in a minute. First I need to tell you this. My hat is off to you, that you didn’t let your father and his gabby fiancée send you back here this summer. When you came last year, you were on a mission, something only you could have accomplished. This summer you’d be one more tourist among the crowds of tourists, and I’d be delighted to see you, but we wouldn’t have one damned thing in common except UFOs, which you’ve stopped belie
ving in even though you don’t know it yet and probably won’t for a long time.

  I also need to say congratulations on that kiss.

  Do me a favor. When you head off to college, don’t forget to take Sandra’s address. Write to her. Sooner than you write Rochelle, sooner than you write me. Yes, I know, she’s got a boyfriend, a college man. But you’ll be a college man yourself in a couple of days. And boyfriends are not always forever.

  Only what we carry in our hearts is forever.

  One morning, just about four weeks ago, the phone in our barracks rang, and it was for me. I think it must have been the exact same time you had your dream about the three men. Remember, the sun rises earlier here than where you are. It’s morning in Israel, while back in the States you’re still in dreamland.

  It was Dr. Zeitlin from Hadassah, the one who treated your baby. Who found for her the healing none of the others could. He said: “Go across the old border that isn’t there anymore, borukh Hashem, thank God. Find Dr. Saeed Talibi.” And he gave me the address of Talibi’s office.

  I said: “Why? You want me to bring him a message?”

  “No message,” he says. “Just go. Find him.”

  Probably you can guess the rest of the story. Who should I find in the good doctor’s office with him when I get to Salah ed-Din Street in East Jerusalem? You already know. You already can guess—part of it.

  Talibi and Rochelle, just beaming, delighted as can be. And there’s a third person with them. A fourth, counting me.

  This is what gives me hope. An impossible hope, a hope that shouldn’t be there. I think, if I hadn’t seen that little girl with my own eyes—

  A toddler, I would have called her. Except she could barely toddle. Hardly had the strength to walk; couldn’t do it at all without Rochelle’s helping, holding her hand. She breathed hard every step she took. But just her walking was a miracle.

  She shouldn’t have grown so much since you flew with her in the disk. She wouldn’t if she were a human child. But their physiology is different; Talibi kept insisting on that.

  Her eyes are still enormous. Rochelle has to put huge sunglasses on her whenever they go outside, so she won’t attract attention. Talibi seems to think they’ll shrink as she grows, in proportion to her face, so eventually she may be able to pass among human beings.

  She speaks.

  She held out her hand to me and said, in perfect English: “You must be Julian. Mama’s told me so much about you.”

  Who she meant by Mama, I don’t know. I don’t think it was Rochelle; she knows Rochelle’s not really her mama. I shook her hand, very gently. I said to her, in Hebrew, “Koreem lee Yehoshua,” I’m called Yehoshua.

  She answered in Hebrew, “Naeem me’ohd.” Pleased to meet you.

  I couldn’t believe it. I had to plop myself down into one of the office chairs, I was so flabbergasted. Talibi’s belly shook from laughing, he must have thought I looked so funny.

  He said: “Arabic too.”

  French also, Rochelle tells me. Those are all the languages we have among us, so we don’t know how many she knows. All that are spoken on this earth, I suspect. And even beyond.

  She had a message for you.

  She said to tell you she loves you. She doesn’t blame you for what happened; she knows it wasn’t your fault. She said, when you thirst, she will always dip her finger in water and cool your tongue. I don’t know what she meant, but that’s what she said. Even if there’s a gulf between you and her the size of the galaxy, she said, she’ll find a way to bring a cup to your lips—

  Why, Mr. Shapiro! You’re crying!

  CHAPTER 47

  I KNOW I’M CRYING. I CAN’T STOP. MY TEARS SPILL ONTO the paper, onto Julian’s letter, onto the pen through which his words pour out. By the dresser my suitcase is packed, my journal inside, though I’m leaving all my UFO books here in the bedroom of my childhood.

  “Danny!”

  It’s my father. He knows I’m not Danny anymore. Sometimes he forgets. I don’t say anything. It’s hard, but I wait him out.

  “Dan!”

  “What, Dad?” I call back.

  “Ready to go!”

  So this is good-bye. I won’t live here anymore. All summer I’ve looked forward to this, getting out of his and Mrs. Colton’s hair, living in a dorm, going to bed whenever I please. Leaving this soiled, tattered cocoon behind me. But now—

  “Five minutes, Dad! OK?”

  “OK. Five minutes.”

  I said five minutes; I meant five minutes. That’s all it’ll take.

  It’s a bright, blowy day, warm for September. The windows in my bedroom have been open until now, when I shut them. I go to the bookcase over the bed to say good-bye.

  One by one I touch them, the odd, disreputable books that shaped and consoled my teenage years, kept over my bed so I could reach for them when sleep wouldn’t come. Albert Bender, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned. And of course M. K. Jessup, The Case for the UFO.

  I pull The Case for the UFO down from the shelf. I flip through the pages. Plenty of annotations. All of them mine.

  No Gypsies passed this book hand to hand, writing into it the secrets of UFOs and invisibility. Maybe that wonderful book, that special copy, really exists. Maybe someday I’ll find it. But this isn’t it. Just an ordinary book, by a UFO investigator with fifty-nine years of loneliness behind him, more than three times my seventeen. Who finally couldn’t face any more years. So he went to his car, ran a tube from the exhaust pipe into the window, turned the ignition ...

  I shudder. My fingers curl, as if to grasp at a chain-link fence. I promise myself: never again.

  It may be better at Carthage; it may be worse. I will never let myself come near that again.

  I close my eyes. Once more I feel myself climbing the wall from the Well of Souls, toward the entrance of the tunnel that leads from death into life. I hold the book tight, so it won’t fall from my hand. Below me are jagged rocks; if I slip, all my bones will be shattered. Amid the rocks I can see the bursting bubbles that are the souls of the human generations—

  One of them my mother’s.

  I clutch hard at the book, so I won’t start up again with the crying. But it’s too late; they’re already flowing, those tears—

  “Danny ! Dan!”

  —and in the act of clutching I swing out from the rock wall and nearly lose my grip. I don’t think twice. I let go the book, grab on to the wall. The book falls with a splash into the waters below, scattering the crowd of departed souls—

  It tumbles onto my bedspread.

  There I leave it.

  I hurry out to the car, on a windy autumn day, clouds blowing across the empty blue sky.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many have helped me along this road. First and foremost, my wife, Rose Shalom Halperin, my earliest and in many ways my best reader, who saw the first sentences of the first draft (long since discarded) in January 1997, and said, “It’s good. Keep going.” And I did keep going; and when I grew discouraged with the length of the journey and its difficulty, she was there to encourage and sustain me. This book, and my life as a writer, I owe to her.

  My friend and former colleague, Professor Yaakov Ariel of the Religious Studies Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, read an early draft and gave me encouragement and valuable suggestions. He drew upon his experience growing up in Jerusalem, in the Abu Tor neighborhood along the old border (before the 1967 war) between Israel and Jordan, to show me how I might handle the end of what is now Part Six; his comments inspired me to locate a crucial scene at the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu. Novelist Lee Smith, with the warm generosity that has always been characteristic of her, read part of that draft and gave me her feedback and encouragement, along with my first guidance into the unfamiliar world of the publishing business.

  Several years later, novelist Ann Prospero read part of a later draft that had been much revised and tight
ened but was still far too long. She said, “You’ve got two stories here, and they keep getting in each other’s way. The UFO story is the more exciting of the two. Keep it; get rid of the rest.” I did as she suggested. Thus was born Journal of a UFO Investigator in its present form.

  Novelist Peggy Payne was “book doctor” to an early draft, and I’m indebted to her for the care and sensitivity she poured into this task. I am indebted to the writers’ group established in 2001 by Charity Terry-Lorenzo, which has helped me over the years with one novel after another. The membership of the group changed over the years; those who worked with me on Journal of a UFO Investigator were Mike Brown, Vicki Edwards, Sylvia Freeman, Bryan Gilmer, Jessica Hollander, Jennifer Madriaga, Susan Payne, Dave VanHook, and Robin Whitsell. I’m grateful to them all, and most especially Bryan and Dave, who, even after we were no longer in the group together, generously read complete drafts of the novel and gave me their invaluable criticism and warm encouragement. So did novelist Joyce Allen and my friends Elaine Bauman and Jonathan Tepper.

  My current writing group, under the incomparable leadership of novelist Anna Jean Mayhew, has given me the most immense help with this and other projects. Its members have included Gabriel Cuddahee, Ron Jackson, Deborah Klaus, Kathryn Milam, Susan Payne, Elizabeth Schoenfeld, and Sarah Wilkins. Special thanks to Gabe, who gave me the title for Part One, for which I’d searched for many months.

  Danny Shapiro’s story owes a great debt to the mythmaker extraordinaire of Clarksburg, West Virginia, Gray Barker (1925-1984), and his forgotten 1956 bestseller They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. The “three men in black” may not have been Barker’s invention—there probably is a nucleus of fact in the story of Albert K. Bender’s frightening brush with mysterious visitors in the fall of 1953. But it was Barker who gave the legend its powerful and enduring formulation. He did much the same for the “Shaver mystery” that unfolded through the second half of the 1940s on the pulp pages of Amazing Stories magazine, with its “Elder Gods” and “dero” and underground caves. A few years after the publication of They Knew Too Much, Barker moved on to promoting the legends surrounding the death of Morris K. Jessup (1900-1959) and their link to the ever elusive Philadelphia experiment.