The Klaatu Terminus

by Pete Hautman

  The dress was in extraordinary condition. It had only been worn once. The taffeta skirt was crisp yet pliable, the beads still had their original sheen, and there was no yellowing whatsoever. Greta had stored it carefully in tissue paper in its original box from Dayton’s downtown store in Minneapolis. The only flaw was a wine stain above the left breast.

  “A perfect place for a lovely corsage,” Greta had said when Emily pointed out the stain. Greta had been pestering Emily to try it on ever since. “I know it will fit you, dear. I was just your size when Hamm and I got married.”

  Emily’s only thought at that moment had been that she would never let herself go like Greta.

  She stood up and ran her fingers across the beaded bodice. The slick hardness of the beads made her think of chain mail, as if the dress could deflect a bullet. She turned the dress to look at the back. Getting into it would not be easy. She would need help with the loop fasteners — again, like donning a suit of armor. Getting it off would be just as difficult. The thought of being trapped inside it made her shiver.

  Emily thought she knew what love was. Hamm and Greta loved each other. But theirs was a gentle, daily, practical love. They loved her, as well, with the tender, protective love that parents have for their children. And she loved them back.

  But what of Adrian? She had seen the sudden, melodramatic love that swept away many of her school friends — almost a parody of the burning, all-consuming love depicted in movies and on television — but she had never experienced it for herself. Did she love Adrian? She cared for him, certainly. She was attracted by his self-confidence, his masculinity, his harsh good looks, and most of all by his desire for her. Sometimes she could feel it coming off him, that hunger. But did she love him?

  When they walked through town arm in arm, she felt proud.

  When he fixed his eyes upon her, she felt beautiful.

  When he spoke of his dreams and plans, she felt inspired.

  If that was love, then, yes, she loved him.

  Still, the thought that there might be something more, something missing, something she had never experienced . . . gnawed at her.

  A few days after Adrian left, Emily had tried talking about it with Karen Jonas, her best friend from high school. Karen, who had gone out with more boys than Emily could count, had laughed at her.

  “You want something that doesn’t exist,” Karen had said. “Look at me. I’m going out with Stan Elkin. Chances are I’ll marry him. Do I love him? Eh. But I know I can make him into a lovable guy if I work at it. He’s going to college up in Saint Paul next year. I’m moving in with him.”

  “You’re going to live with him?” Emily feigned shock though in truth she was not at all surprised.

  Karen shrugged. “Think of it as a test run.”

  “I don’t think Adrian would go for that.”

  “Probably not,” Karen agreed. “Anyway, you two are officially engaged. That’s way better than being in love.”

  Now, staring at the big white dress, Emily wasn’t so sure.

  The three weeks since Adrian left had been the emptiest weeks of her life. Nothing but long days of working at the Economart, evenings of doing nothing at all, and endless nights of lying awake and thinking about what life would be like for her once she got married. She no longer hung out with Karen or any of her other girlfriends. Their lives revolved around their boyfriends or ex-boyfriends. Now that Emily was engaged to Adrian, she had entered another phase.

  In part, she knew, it had to do with the fact that Adrian was almost a decade older than her. And that he wanted to be a preacher. Once they’d become engaged, her girlfriends had stopped talking about sex — or anything remotely sinful or interesting — in Emily’s presence. It was as if Emily had suddenly become older, alien, part of the adult world. The future wife of a future preacher. Excluded. And she was only nineteen.

  A prickling sensation at the back of her neck made her turn to the window. Hovering just outside the glass was another person-shaped cloud. She squeezed her eyes closed, counted to ten, then looked again. The cloud was gone. She stepped to the window and lowered the blind. She certainly wasn’t going to change clothes with a ghost watching her. Even an imaginary ghost.

  She had once mentioned seeing them to Adrian. He had suggested prayer, or an eye doctor, in that order.

  That didn’t make the ghosts any less real. She had thought about talking to her doctor, but she didn’t feel sick or crazy, and she didn’t want any pills. These days, she kept what she saw to herself. Mostly. But at the train station in Winona, when she had seen another one of the strange, cloudy figures, she had mentioned it to Kosh and he had taken her seriously. He was the only one who listened.

  She wished he would call. He’d said he would. She would love the distraction of a movie or a trip up to the cities for some shopping. And she liked Kosh. He talked to her like a regular person, and he was funny. In some ways he reminded her of Adrian, but in most ways he was so different that it was hard to believe they were brothers.

  She should just call him. Emily regarded the phone on her bedside table. It would be the same phone number as Adrian, but Kosh, not Adrian, would answer. She wondered how he was doing, taking care of things on his own. He’s only seventeen, she reminded herself. Not even out of high school. But he seemed older, more mature than she was in many ways. As far as she knew, he’d never had a long-term girlfriend, but girls liked him. Even Karen had once confessed to having a crush on him. He was the closest thing Hopewell had to a bad boy rebel biker. Except for Ronnie Becker, who was just a pathetic delinquent and not nearly as good-looking as Kosh.

  She’d heard a rumor that Ronnie had been arrested in Mankato a week ago. Kosh would know. She would have to ask him. She looked again at the phone, then laughed at herself for being so tentative. He was just a teenage boy. Her future brother-in-law. What was she fretting about?*

  Kosh was working in his garden when Emily pulled into the driveway. He looked up and waved as she got out of her car.

  “Hey!” He stood up and wiped his hands on his hips.

  Emily smiled, feeling self-conscious in her red and white Economart smock, complete with name badge.

  “I was just on my way to work,” she said. “Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing all on your own here.”

  “Doing fine. What’s up?”

  “Nothing.” Emily looked at the newly seeded row. “What are you planting?”

  “Arugula,” Kosh said. “I’m growing it for the Roost.”

  “You’re kidding. Red Grauber is serving salads?”

  “Actually, it’s for a new burger. Arugula and goat cheese.”

  “Now I know you’re kidding!”

  “Seriously, I had one in Mankato. Amazing.”

  Shaking her head, Emily walked down the rows, checking out his tomatoes, Swiss chard, lettuce, and summer squash. She stopped at the herb bed.

  “Lavender!” She bent down and ran her fingers through the frondlike leaves. “What do you do with it?”

  “I just like the way it looks.”

  Emily smelled her hand. “Mmm. You could make potpourri.”

  Kosh crossed his arms. “I don’t think so.”

  Emily laughed. Kosh looked embarrassed.

  “Have you heard from Adrian?” he said abruptly.

  “Just a couple of postcards. He’s in Jerusalem. He sent me a picture of the Wailing Wall.”

  “That sounds like Adrian.”

  Emily straightened up. “I have to get going. But I was wondering . . . do you still want to see a movie?”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not doing anything next Friday. Men in Black is opening in Rochester. It’s about aliens. You like aliens, right?”

  “I do,” said Kosh.

  THIS IS NOT A DATE, EMILY REMINDED HERSELF.

  She was just going to a movie with her fiancé’s little brother. But it was the first time she’d been out on a Friday night since Adrian had left. Actual
ly, since a long time before that. Adrian was not big on going to movies and so forth. He would be more likely to take her to some church-related event — a Bible discussion group, or if he was feeling adventuresome, charity bingo at the church in Ghentburg.

  She checked herself in the mirror. Jeans and a plain pink T-shirt. Was the T-shirt too tight? She took it off and replaced it with a sleeveless white blouse. It was hot and humid outside, but the theater might be cool, so she draped a cotton sweater over her shoulders.

  In the kitchen, Greta was kneading a ball of sourdough, as she did every other night. Emily would wake up in the morning to the aroma of fresh-baked bread. Greta looked up at Emily, askance. “What are you all dressed up for at this time of night?”

  “Night?” Emily laughed. “It’s six o’clock!”

  “Hmph!” Greta lifted the ball of dough and slapped it back on the butcher-block table. She and Hamm were usually in bed by eight.

  “I’m going to a movie,” Emily said.

  Greta pursed her lips, which caused the entire bottom half of her face to become a whorl of wrinkles. Greta was seventy-five, nearly four times as old as Emily. She’d been sixty when she and Hamm had adopted Emily, who was four then, or maybe five — her exact birthdate was a mystery. Fifteen years ago, Hamm Ryan had found her huddled in the overgrown bushes beside the boarded-up hotel in downtown Hopewell. No one had ever found out who her parents were, or how she had come to Hopewell. After some legal wrangling, Hamm and Greta had formally adopted her. Emily remembered none of that, although she had fragments of memories — or perhaps dreams — from her life before Hopewell.

  “With who?” Greta asked.

  “Curtis Feye.”

  Greta gave that a moment, then went back to her kneading. It was her way of communicating disapproval, but not such severe disapproval that she felt the need to say anything.

  “Adrian assigned him to take me to a movie now and then,” Emily said.

  Greta shook her head, indicating that she would say nothing more. Emily went out to the front porch to wait for Kosh. Hamm was sitting on the swing, smoking his pipe. Emily sat down next to him and let the sweet smell of his aromatic tobacco tickle her nose.

  “Hey, kid,” Hamm said around the stem of his pipe. Decades of smoking had left him with a permanent depression in his lower lip, where the pipe now rested comfortably. Hamm was even older than Greta.

  “Hey, Hamm,” Emily said. They both lapsed into comfortable silence, as was their custom.

  A few minutes later, Emily heard the buzz of a motorcycle approaching. Kosh pulled into the driveway and got off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The clutch burned out on the pickup.” He held up a helmet. “I brought an extra helmet.”

  Greta stepped out onto the porch. “Young lady, you are not getting on the back of that thing.”

  “I’m not?” Emily said.

  Greta, having said her piece, shook her head.

  “We could take your car,” Kosh said. “Or make it another night.”

  Emily had ridden on a motorcycle exactly once before, when she was a junior in high school. It had terrified her, but she’d never forgotten the thrill of it. Maybe it was time to try it again.

  Emily looked at Hamm.

  Hamm took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the motorcycle. “Used to have one of them myself,” he said. “Took Greta for a ride and she hasn’t forgiven me yet.”

  “Did you crash?” Emily asked.

  “Nope. Just went fast as the devil.” He set the pipe back in his lip groove and nodded. “Back in the day.”

  Emily was shaking when she climbed onto the back of the motorcycle, but by the time they hit the third curve on their way out of town, her arms locked in a death grip around Kosh’s waist, her fear became exhilaration. Her life was in his hands, and she realized that she trusted him absolutely. As they sped down the rural highway, she had a sense that they were encased in a bubble of invulnerability.

  Of course, she knew that a flaw in the roadway, a blowout, a drunk driver, a deer crossing the road — any of these things could send them hurtling into a ditch — but at the same time, she was sure that nothing could happen to them. It made no sense, but it was true. She gave herself up to the wind and the snarl of the engine and the hum of the tires on asphalt, and for a time she did not think about her life, or about Adrian, or of ghosts.

  THE SUN WAS SETTING AS THEY WALKED OUT OF THE THEATER.

  “That was the silliest thing I’ve ever seen,” Emily said.

  “You didn’t like it?” Kosh said.

  “I loved it!” They crossed the parking lot to Kosh’s bike. “Adrian would have hated it,” she said. “He doesn’t believe in silliness. Or aliens.”

  “Do you?” Kosh asked as he handed her a helmet.

  “Well, I don’t know about aliens, but I’ve seen ghosts.”

  “Really?” Kosh put his helmet on and swung a leg over the motorcycle.

  “Maybe they’re just in my imagination, but that doesn’t make them less real.”

  “I guess so. Do you ever think that everything you see is, like, a projection of what’s inside your head?”

  “Every day,” Emily said. “I believe in men in black, too. I’ve met them. Only they didn’t look like the guys in the movie.”

  Emily had an odd expression on her face. Kosh wasn’t sure if she was kidding.

  “What did they look like?” he asked.

  “Like they were Amish.”

  “Maybe they were Amish.”

  “Maybe . . .” Emily was staring at the helmet in her hands, and showed no inclination to climb on the bike.

  “Are you okay?”

  Emily smiled, but her brow remained furrowed as she remembered the two men who had attacked her when she was a little girl. She hadn’t thought about them in a very long time.

  “I was seven, I think,” she said to Kosh. “I was riding my bike when I saw something on the road. Like a big fuzzy glass disk. I thought it was really weird, but I didn’t know enough to be scared.”

  Kosh regarded her with a puzzled expression.

  “Then these two men stepped out of the disk — it was like a hole in the air — and they started walking toward me. I’d seen Amish people before, but they were always riding in their carts, not coming out of nowhere like that. Anyway, they walked up to me and said something I couldn’t understand. Then one of them grabbed me off my bike and wrapped his arms around me really tight, and the other one had this clear plastic rod in his hand. I think I screamed, and he stuck the rod in my mouth. He kind of moved it around a little, then pulled it out. Then they let me go and walked back to the disk and disappeared.”

  Kosh said, “This is something that really happened?”

  “It’s what I remember. You don’t believe me?”

  “I didn’t say that. But you got to admit, it’s kind of strange.”

  “Hamm and Greta didn’t believe me either. But they took me to Dr. Harmon and he checked me over. You know, to see if I’d been molested or something. It was awful. But all he found was a little scratch on the roof of my mouth. Greta told me I must have dreamed the whole thing, but it didn’t seem like a dream to me.”

  “I wonder what they wanted,” Kosh said.

  Emily felt a flood of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For pretending to believe me.” She put the helmet on her head and climbed onto the bike behind him. Moments later, they were on the highway, riding into the sunset.

  KOSH TOOK IT EASY ON THE WAY BACK TO HOPEWELL. When he was riding alone, he never thought about having an accident or getting hurt, but with Emily on the back, he found himself driving much slower than usual. That story about the two men made him suddenly see her as a little girl, the same way he sometimes thought of himself as a little kid in a big, clumsy, hairy body. He felt protective. And a little scared.

  What had really happened? He believed her — or believed t
hat something had happened, something that had scared her badly. She may have seen some Amish men. But Amish men stepping out of a magic disk? Little kids had vivid imaginations. And what was all this stuff about ghosts?

  He was hyperaware of her arms wrapped around his belly, and her body pressed against his back — a seven-year-old girl in a woman’s body, still frightened by something that had happened so many years ago. He wondered if she’d ever told that story to Adrian.

  Lost in thought, he was surprised to see that they were already coming up on Hopewell. He felt Emily’s grip loosen slightly as he slowed and rolled onto Main Street. He pulled over in front of Red’s Roost.

  “You hungry?” he said, looking back at her.

  “Grill’s closed,” Red said, jerking a thumb at the clock behind the bar. Ten o’clock.

  “Come on, Red,” Kosh said. “I’ll clean up. You don’t have to do a thing.”

  Red Grauber’s features contorted into a scowl. He looked at Emily. “What are you doing hanging out with this reprobate?”

  “You mean my future brother-in-law?” Emily said with a grin.

  Red snorted, then shook his head. “How is Adrian, anyways? You heard from him?”

  “He sent a postcard,” Emily said. “He’s says he’s fine.”

  “How are your folks? They know you’re frequenting my little den of iniquity?”

  Emily looked around. Henry Hall was slumped at the end of the bar, a dead, forgotten cigar wedged between his fingers, staring into a flat schooner of beer. Henry was only thirty-five or so, but he looked as if he’d been drinking since the dawn of time. Jake and Ivy Anderson were filling the back booth — spilling out of it, almost — eating French fries and drinking orange sodas. A lean man with a long nose and a cigarette in his mouth was shooting pool by himself. One of the Petersen brothers. Otherwise, the bar was empty.

  “Is this what iniquity looks like?” she asked.

  “Iniquity, Hopewell style,” Red grumbled.