by Sean Wallace
“What is it?” he asked the Sheriff.
“I don’t know any more than you do, son.”
Jack didn’t believe him. Always he felt the Sheriff knew more about things than he let on.
“You saw it!” said Jack.
“Saw what?” said Janniffer.
The giant was far out of sight now, though the helicopters could still faintly be heard in the distance.
“You’ll read about it in the morning paper, honey,” said Sheriff Hubbins. “Hop in, Jack, we’ll take you back to our house, call your mom from there. You know you got everybody upset again.”
“We gotta try and stop it,” said Jack, “It’s headed right for the trailer park.”
“Naw,” said the Sheriff. “Never get that far, the army will stop it.”
“What’s headed toward your house?” Janniffer demanded.
Jack told her.
“I’ve seen that movie,” said Doggart.
“It’s not a movie,” said Jack.
Janniffer shook her head.
“Ask your dad,” said Jack.
“Well, I saw something, that’s for sure. But I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re always cooking up something out there in the hills. Ninety per cent of the land in this state is federal, you know.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say, sir?”
“It’s probably a giant secret weapon robot that got out of control. The government wouldn’t put it here if it really posed a threat to the community,” said the Sheriff.
“It’s a man. Human. I touched it.”
“Well then, it’s a man.”
“And you’re not going to do anything about it?”
“Nothing with a car full of teenagers, I’m not. Tell you what, Jack: let’s run you kids back to my house and you can clean yourself up. I’ll get on the horn, round up my deputies and we’ll come back out. Probably just be in the army’s way but—”
“I don’t like it, Sheriff. I don’t know why you’re acting this way—like all of this is no big deal. But I guess it doesn’t make any difference. You’re the way you are and I’m the way I am.”
“Now listen, Jack—”
Jack turned his back on Sheriff Hubbins while he was still talking. He had never turned his back on an adult before.
“Jack!” called the Sheriff and Jack ignored him. He heard the Sheriff tell Doggart to pull the jeep up.
The jeep came alongside him and kept pace as he walked. They were all shouting at him. Janniffer was telling him not to be stupid. Her friend Paige was yelling at her not to be stupid. Finally Hubbins cried, “Enough!” He ordered the jeep stopped and got out.
Then he told Doggart to turn it around and take the girls home. His voice did not leave room for objections.
When the two of them were alone on the highway, Jack started walking home and the Sheriff kept pace with him, a few steps back.
Neither spoke for a long time.
“Must be pretty far from here by now—for it to be completely out of sight,” said Sheriff Hubbins.
“You can still hear the helicopters,” said Jack.
“You can hear pretty damn far out here, when it’s quiet like this. There’s nothing but dust and sagebrush, nothing at all to block a sound.”
Jack turned to face him. The Sheriff was looking off into the distance and, not seeing that Jack had stopped, walked into him.
“Well,” Hubbins said, “we’re stuck out here now.”
“Where’d it come from? What is it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I don’t believe that, sir.”
The Sheriff ’s mouth tightened. “That’s too bad.”
“Did my dad really shoot himself?”
The Sheriff sighed and dropped his head. “Now why would you ask me that? You know he did. I’m sorry for it. We’re all sorry for it, but it happened, son.
“Things happen,” he continued. “Things happen that’re just a shame, but that don’t mean there’s anything more to them than meets the eye. That’s not fair, it don’t make it any easier to accept, but there it is. Your dad was my best friend. He was a good man. If he were still around he’d probably be Sheriff now instead of me.”
“But he isn’t around,” said Jack. “And I want to know what happened to him. Did the government kill him?” Then he added, “Did you?”
Sheriff Hubbins suddenly looked drawn and old. “I grew up with your father, your mother. I was the best man at their wedding. And I’ve always looked out for you and her. John Arthur Jaffe Jr, how can you say something like that to me?”
Jack felt ashamed and cast down his eyes. “I know you cared for him,” he said, without really being sure of anything. “But something strange did happen up there that night, and the giant proves it.”
“A lot of rumors have come and gone about what happened and they’re all bunk.”
Sheriff Hubbins had told him that before, and he had heard all the rumors himself, of course: that the government had murdered his father and made it look like suicide because he had stumbled onto the test site of a new secret weapon—a weapon so terrible it made the H-bomb and the neutron bomb look like toys; or that he had come upon the crash site of a UFO, and was killed by aliens, which the government then covered up.
“It was my dad who went up there to investigate the flash in the sky—the meteorite or whatever it was—and never came back. Then all of sudden the government fenced off all that territory.”
“Just coincidence, Jack. They were probably planning the fence for months before that night. No government project in history ever moved that fast.”
“The giant glows green. Just like the hills do—did. And when my dad went up there it was the first night anybody ever saw them glow at all.”
“They don’t glow—that’s an optical illusion.”
Jack threw his hands up in disgust. “Is that what you’re gonna say—about your car? That it got crushed by an optical illusion? Don’t lie to me anymore—that giant proves you wrong!”
“What difference does it make—it was a long time ago. Come on, it’s late.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”
Jack believed they had been building secret weapons out in the hills—or dumping radioactive crap everywhere. That was what the giant man was, the product of government testing. It was as silly as believing in the Incredible Hulk—but there it was. His father had stumbled into it and they killed him, then brushed everyone else off. Sheriff Hubbins could have been in on it, too. Maybe they fixed him up with the Sheriff ’s job. After all, he even admitted that his father would be Sheriff now if he were alive.
He told this suspicion to Sheriff Hubbins.
The Sheriff laughed a little. “Anybody who wants this job can have it. This ain’t no glamor job. And I wouldn’t take a job in exchange for any man’s life.”
“But you’re hiding something.”
“Look, Jack are we gonna dance like this all night.”
“I got time.”
“Shouldn’t you be saving the trailer park from the monster?”
Jack said nothing.
“That was the fifties—” said Hubbins. “Well, the early sixties anyway. You didn’t talk out about anything and everything that happened back then.”
“It isn’t the fifties anymore, Sheriff.”
“Maybe not for you kids, but times don’t change as fast as you think they do.” Sheriff Hubbins shuffled his feet on the loose gravel littering the blacktop. “Jack I don’t know what really happened up there that night—not much of it anyway. But I guess you’re a man now and you should know what I can tell you. I don’t believe your father did kill himself. But what’s done is done and it can’t be undone. Sometimes looks like there never will be an end to that business.”
Jack listened. When the Sheriff paused he held his breath, waiting for him to continue.
Finally the Sheriff did. “The old highway used to run right through those
foothills, and that night your dad was patrolling and saw a flash of light. He called it in and then went up to have a look. He called in a second time.
“The dispatcher said he sounded excited and out of breath. Transcripts of the calls were confiscated later but I had a chance to read them first; your father found some kind of wreckage up there—he estimated that it spread over half a mile at least. Thought it must be an aircraft. Turned out to be a spaceship.”
“A spaceship?”
“And he found a man’s body. A man in a space suit. And the space suit had those old letters on it: CCCP. We sure knew what that meant.”
Jack shook his head. He didn’t.
“That was USSR in Russian. The dead man was a Russian cosmonaut.” He paused, seeming to collect his thoughts. “I was the first officer to get there, but by that time the place was already swarming with military from the testing base. They wouldn’t let me through their perimeter, so I screamed and hollered until somebody with a lot of gold on his lapel came and told me about how they found your dad.
“They showed me the body of a dead cosmonaut. Then they brought me to your dad’s patrol car and showed me his body. There was a bullet hole in his temple. They already had him in a body bag but they unzipped it enough to show me the wound. I asked to see the rest of him and they refused. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me suspicious.
“But there was an awful lot of them and only one of me. I just nodded and held my tongue. I swore that I would do something as soon as I got away from them—but at that moment I was in no position to start an investigation. Who’s to say there might not’ve been two suicides that night if I wasn’t careful.”
“You left him.”
The Sheriff looked angry. “I used my head—not my smart mouth, son.”
“And you are alive.”
“That’s right, Jack, I am. Go ahead and hate me for it—but it won’t change a thing.”
Jack was speechless. His head was swimming with thoughts and resentments. He wanted to be away from there—he wanted to go and never see the Sheriff or the town or anyone he knew ever again. He wanted never to think of his father again.
“They escorted me back to my patrol car and put a couple of their boys in with me. We all went to the station and they spent a long time in private conference with old Sheriff Bailey. Everybody on the force—there were about thirteen of us back then I guess—had all been called in, and we sat in the station waiting for them to emerge from the old man’s office. When they did, they had my report all written out for me and ready to sign.
“I signed it,” he continued, “you bet I did, or I would’ve never held a state or county job again. I just sort of understood that was how it was meant to be—the way you just sort of understood things back then—without anybody having to spell it out for you. Anyway, the report was just pretty much what I had seen minus the spaceship and . . . ”
“And what?” said Jack.
“And one other thing I saw that they left out—they were picking through the wreckage—I saw a piece of the cockpit, or whatever you call that part of a spacecraft—the capsule. Your dad reported finding one dead cosmonaut and I saw one body. But there were two seats in the wreckage.”
“Maybe the second cosmonaut was still alive.” Maybe he still was, living for years off the radiation-soaked desert and growing under the hills.
“And killed your dad.”
“And the government covered it up?”
“Wars start over that kind of thing. About thirty miles from the crash site they were doing underground H-bomb tests. They put out the story that radiation was detected at the site and that’s how they kept people away. Cost them a lot of money settling the class action suit a few years ago—but they couldn’t change their story after so many years—and anyway all the money went right back into the community. Settlement money built your new high school gym for one thing.”
“And that’s worth letting everybody believe my dad killed himself.”
“I don’t think anyone around here thinks less of him. Or your mother. You weren’t even born yet, but the whole community came together during all that. Everybody liked your father, Jack.”
Jack squinted, trying to prevent tears from coming. “Then why didn’t they stand up for him? Why didn’t you?”
“Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand—but nobody did anything that night just to hurt you or your dad. I think everybody did what they thought was for the best.”
Jack wished the giant who had murdered his father would crush the whole town under his feet. He turned from the Sheriff and walked.
“Jack.” He heard the tone of seriousness in the Sheriff ’s voice. “Jack, don’t go that way. I mean it.”
Jack ignored him and kept walking the direction the giant had gone. He didn’t want to think about what he might find when he got back home; he only knew that he did not want to hide from whatever was going to happen.
The Sheriff was not following him, but back there—down the road—Jack heard trucks. A flood of lights swept under his feet and he turned. The army rolled down the highway in full force.
Moments after her dad had ordered them to leave, Janniffer began to fear for him and Jack. Jack had been half-raving with his talk of the giant man, and even her father—who was never bothered by anything—seemed weird. And what had happened to his patrol car? Paige must have picked up on her feelings because she spontaneously reached over and held Janniffer’s hand. The two of them were in the back and Doggart was up front alone. He was uncharacteristically quiet—thank God.
They never got as far as home. Green army tanks and trucks were moving toward them down both lanes of the highway. Janniffer didn’t know tanks could move so fast.
“What do we do?” shouted Doggart in a panic. There was no room for them on the road and the tanks weren’t slowing down.
“Pull off!” cried Paige.
He swerved the wheel and they were out of the way just as the convoy reached them and suddenly ground to a halt.
A jeep slipped out of the line and came alongside them. An officer got out and motioned for them to roll down a window. He was a red-haired man who did not look much older than they were, but when he spoke he addressed Doggart as “Sir” and the two girls as “Ma’am” when he asked to see identification.
Paige and Doggart each showed him their driver’s licenses.
“I don’t have mine,” Janniffer said. “I ran out of the house without it.”
“I see,” said the officer flatly. She could not tell if it meant that she were in trouble.
“She’s Sheriff Hubbins’ daughter,” said Doggart. Damn Doggart. He went on: “We just left the Sheriff—he told us to go straight home and that’s what we’re doing.
“I see,” said the officer again, “and where’d you leave Sheriff—I’m sorry, what was the name?”
“Hubbins. Maybe half a mile up.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave your vehicle and step into the jeep, sir. Ladies. There is a curfew in effect.”
“Woah,” said Doggart. “The curfew is not active outside city limits.”
Was there no end to his stupidity? thought Janniffer.
“I don’t know what curfew you are talking about, sir, but my curfew is in effect anywhere and everywhere I say it is. This is martial law, sir.”
Sheriff Hubbins would have been more than happy to have the cavalry arrive if they hadn’t been hauling his daughter and her friends along with them. A captain with red hair and freckles got out of the jeep Janniffer and the others were riding in. He carried an electric blue folder—the kind with a flap over it and elastic string wrapped around it. He walked up to Hubbins who didn’t give him time to speak.
“Son,” said Hubbins, “what do you mean by hauling them kids back here into the fire zone?”
“Which fire zone is that, sir?”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I saw the thing. If you’re gonna catch it you’re going
about it mighty slow, aren’t you?”
“I have my orders,” said the captain cryptically. “Please take a seat in the jeep, Sheriff.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“It’s for your own safety, Sheriff. I notice you seem to have misplaced your sidearm.”
“You noticed that, eh?” He turned around to say something to Jack but the kid was gone, slipped off into the darkness just as the battalion pulled up.
Hubbins squeezed into the back of the jeep next to his daughter. She looked at him after the battalion started up again and the captain and the driver were concerned with other things. He watched her mouth the words, “Where’s Jack?” Hubbins shook his head briefly. For some reason the captain chose that moment to look back at them. Hubbins said to him, “You figure you got enough tanks?”
The captain got into the jeep and did not turn around again.
They drove along the road and it appeared to Hubbins they might have missed the giant entirely. Perhaps the monster had veered off the highway. Possible, especially since Hubbins could hear the whooshing of fighters jetting off into the east.
They came to the mobile home suburb where Jack and his mother lived. Hubbins himself had grown up there—lived most his life in the place until the Sheriff ’s job had enabled him to get a real home for his family. The giant cosmonaut had been and gone; the area was a shambles. Power lines were down and the streets were dark. Trailers had been kicked around like Lionel boxcars. It was quiet. The teenagers beside him were shocked speechless. It felt to Hubbins like everyone must be dead. The captain ordered his vehicles to fan out in a crescent across the devastation. Men picked up bullhorns and called out for survivors. Gradually a few beaten wretches crawled out from hiding places. The captain ordered them rounded up and had their names taken down. Hubbins did not see Jack’s mother among the dusty survivors.
“Captain,” said Hubbins, trying to sound as polite as possible, “you’ll want to start digging, won’t you? There must be other survivors under all this rubble.”
The young officer looked at him as though the Sheriff had farted. “Thank you for the input,” he said.
Once the soldiers had the survivors’ names they started leading them to the transport trucks. This was no way to be doing things, Hubbins thought. Then, perhaps for consistency’s sake, the soldiers decided to move Hubbins and the kids out of the jeep and into a transport. Hubbins asked a soldier if he could speak to the captain, who had wandered away, but his request was denied. He noted a masked indifference in the soldier’s thin face—an indifference that denoted an attitude with which Hubbins was acutely familiar. He had taken the same attitude himself many times in his career. It was the attitude you take toward a bothersome but powerless prisoner. Hubbins didn’t like how that made him feel, though there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Once inside the transport, the flaps were pulled down and Hubbins observed the attack survivors. There was no talk of the giant at all. It was late in the night now, and most of them had probably been asleep when it happened. The general impression was that the trailer park had been bombed.