Jonah

by Dana Redfield

  That's when Coral pulled over the doll buggy and told her father to count the faith rocks, and he did, all forty, looking at every one, as if each was a jewel, but only one was—the pink crystal, just like the one the fairies left for him. Aunt Triss said it was a miracle. Faith means you believe, and then when something happens like you knew it would, everybody is so surprised.

  Finally, he answers her question.

  “It's like when you're a kid, you know anything is possible, then each year the list of impossibles grows longer, and by the time you're grown up, all you can remember of the miracles you knew as a child are stories about elves and fairies.”

  “But why do they hide?”

  “The fairies and elves?”

  “Mmmm…see they did magic wif my teef.” She points at the necklace and giggles.

  “They hide for the same reason God doesn't show himself.”

  “Why?”

  He puts his arm around her, hugs her close, stroking her tawny-colored hair. “You sure ask some hard questions, Sweetie. Maybe they hide because they're so powerful, we would feel like ants, who can only push crumbs around. We might feel discouraged…. I don't know why they hide. I'm just guessing.”

  “But sometimes they shine the light.”

  “What light?” He looks worried.

  “It's just Paulie. He's not scary.”

  “Paulie?”

  “My angel. He said you'd be back by Chrithmas.”

  He jerks his head and stares down at her. His eyes are like embers again, fiery.

  “Coral Kay. Don't you tell anyone. They won't believe us.”

  “Why?” She never did tell anyone because she always forgot.

  He hugs her again. “It's like I said. Grownups can only believe if you say it's a story or a dream.”

  “Why?”

  “I'm not sure. I just know it's better if we go along—maybe not. I don't know. I have a lot to think about, Sugar Plum. For now, let's just play like fairies and angels are pretend, okay?”

  “Like a secret?”

  “Yeah…our very special secret.”

  And then he hugged her so hard, she almost couldn't breathe. But it felt good.

  After Coral is tucked in bed, and Jonah is alone in his bedroom again, creeping around as if a new arrival in a foreign environment, Triss taps on the door and pokes her head inside.

  “Just wanted to say how thrilled we all are to have you home again.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Triss.” He combs his fingers through his hair. “Looks like you all got along fine without me….” He smiles weakly.

  Triss studies him a moment. She had a feeling he might be feeling displaced. She knows he's got a lot on his mind and there will be a long period of adjustment ahead, but something tells her he and Zion should reconnect as soon as possible. That or she's just being an old busybody.

  “Appearances deceive. You were all we talked about, Jonah. We might not need a man, but we couldn't imagine life without you.”

  He waves her off.

  “Let me revise. It's not easy, but Earth women can get along without men. But one among us really does need you. Call it an alien irony.”

  He scoffs. “Zion? She needs me least of all.”

  Now Triss knows she was right in her earlier observation. He felt foolish for kissing Zion. Zion wasn't a woman who knew how to convey assurance to a man—not yet. Too new to Earth!

  “I trust after you settle in, you'll see you're wrong about that. Sweet dreams…”

  She closes the door on his troubled expression. Let him chew on that!

  Chapter V (22)

  About four in the morning on Christmas day, Triss is awakened by an unidentifiable noise. In the air she sees a big starburst of light that promptly fades, then disappears. Her first reaction is utter calmness, as if she's seen that light a hundred times before. In the next instant, she feels spooked. The skeptic in her brain tells her the light was a hallucination—she didn't really see it.

  The hell I didn't, she thinks, as if her eyes and brain are wired separately and are accustomed to such arguments.

  Now she's thinking she needs to be alert—to keep a close watch on Jonah. She has a feeling there's something she's supposed to say to him. Her mind is already full of things she can't wait to discuss with him, so maybe there's something special she's supposed to convey. If so, how in the world will she know what it is?

  She flicks on the lamp next to the bed, puts on her robe, goes into the kitchenette, and starts the coffee. In all the excitement last night, she forgot to reset the timer on Mr. Coffee. Just as well—she didn't plan on getting up this early!

  When the coffee is brewed, she pours a cup into a penguin mug. Sort of repulsive drinking out of the open skull of a penguin, especially so early in the morning, but she rather likes the little fellow—a gift from Sean Carlotti, one of her step-children.

  As she sits quietly drinking coffee in the dollhouse cottage she so quickly fell in love with, the meaning of the light display comes to her. It was like a test…are you going to deny you saw this? It's the very thing she needs to convey to Jonah: Trust your own experience. It was a message at the heart of the UFO phenomenon, and other events so-called “supernatural.” What's so super about them? she wonders. The only thing super is that most people seem to be blind and deaf to them. Did that make the events more, or less, natural?

  The fact that she moved to Apple Valley one day before Jonah went on his journey was no coincidence, Triss is sure. It's as if she were sent here to help Zion and Coral cope while he was gone. But though she is glad she came, she isn't sure she likes the idea of being used without her conscious knowledge. Like she's a chess piece being pushed around on a board…by what? God? Her Higher Self? By some deeper part of her mind that knows about events before she does, consciously? Whatever, it is increasingly becoming natural to live this way, noticing such connections and synchronicities, if after the facts.

  Last night, impatient, she cornered Jonah and asked in so many words: Were you abducted? He paled, nodded, then shook his head. Then he spread his arms. “How will I ever know?”

  Bless his heart. She gave him a big hug. “Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. No one's got it nailed down yet. Every case is unique. You'll work it out.”

  Triss recalls her first sighting. It was not fleeting like the light in the air this morning. That sucker hung in the air a good three minutes, time enough for old fussy Fred to snap a couple of pictures. But photos are not evidence. Photos are photos, and UFOs are UFOs. Freddie was so mad about that, but we learn our lessons. Everyone else watching the thing was so shocked, they all forgot to lift their cameras. Or was it a faster-than-light choice? Who wanted to glance away from a spaceship long enough to mess with a camera? You might miss something of the splendor. That was the right word—splendor. Extraordinary? Only the first time. After that it was maddening.

  One thing for sure: Jonah's case would not be investigated. Missing forty days with no witnesses and no concrete evidence? Forget it. The parameters for investigation were almost as narrow as what scientists allowed to be real. Only abductees skinny enough to walk down those narrow corridors were studied. This way, Triss reasoned, the true purpose of the phenomenon was protected from forces that always tried to kill the messenger when the message threatened the status quo.

  But you can't kill messengers you can't see, can you?

  The sky is a lovely shade of silvery blue and the birds are singing up the sun as Triss traipses across the dirt ground on her way to the house. We'll lay a stone path here one of these days, she thinks, adding it to her mental list of changes they will make to transform this acreage into a paradise fitting for the meek who dwell here. We'll hang mistletoe in the sky! she thinks, wild with joy.

  Stepping quietly into the house, the first living being she encounters is Thunderpaws, bent over his dish, a mound of yellow fur with a red Christmas bow on the back of his collar.

  The smells are inviting, fresh coffee,
a fire crackling in the living room, cinnamon sticks and orange rinds simmering in a pot of water on the stove. Zion is up. But miracles of miracles, Coral is not. “Goodie.” Triss rubs her hands together. She won't miss seeing the child's first reaction when she sees what the fairies brought. The child is wise to the Santa Claus myth, but the spirit is not lost. Keep your fantasies fluid is one of Triss's formulas for a healthy mind.

  She fills a mug with coffee and goes into the living room where Zion is relaxed on the sofa, knitting. Knitting is too hard on Triss because of arthritis, but she can still teach someone how to do it. The puzzler is how Zion could have knit that star and rose in her shawl, and yet everything else she does is the work of a beginner. When Triss asked her about the needlework on the shawl, Zion smiled mysteriously and told her about a seamstress in the sky named Wah-yoni-humaniel. Conversations with Zion could leave you wobbling somewhere between spellbound and irritated.

  She's dressed in a black velveteen top and pants, about as festive as Zion gets. At least she has a green ribbon in her hair. Triss has on her Christmas sweatshirt, with Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, the whole motif done up in sequins. Her slacks are wine-colored; her shoes, gold slippers.

  The tree never looked more beautiful, like the sparkle and grace of a seventy-something woman who does not know she is old yet. A pink bicycle with training wheels sits mischievously on the far side of the tree. There are other goodies under the tree, and four stockings tacked to the mantel are bulging with fruits and candies.

  “And what did the fairies bring you?” She sits down in the chair next to the sofa.

  “Jonah,” Zion says matter-of-factly, clicking needles. She's knitting a light blue blanket for the baby. If she knit BOY in red across it, Jonah probably wouldn't catch on. Leave it to Miss Mum Lips, he won't know until she's seven months round. Zion could be exasperating. Triss wonders if she lacks the romance gene. She knows Zion is not an alien exactly, but Lord, sometimes you had to wonder.

  “What do you think it means, him coming home when Coral predicted he would?”

  Zion lays aside her knitting and sits with the question. She's not one to engage in trivial talk, so much so, common banter often goes over her head. You never know what she's going to say.

  “It could mean that faith is powerful. Maybe it's an enticement to encourage us to expand our awareness of our communication at deeper levels. Or maybe his love for Coral Kay was the driving force that brought him home on a day he knew would be important for her.”

  Triss thinks about the last. “I can't help thinking of all the little girls in the world waiting for fathers who never show up. Does it mean they love their daughters any less?”

  Zion smiles. “Love is not a science, Triss.”

  Before she can respond, they hear Coral stirring down the hall.

  “Should we wake Jonah?”

  “If you wish,” Zion says. “Or we can just watch and see what develops.”

  Later Triss and Zion are watching out the front window as Jonah helps Coral with her first ride on her new bicycle. After the child's initial whoop of joy, spotting the bicycle, her face screwed up in disgust at sight of the training wheels. Now her face is set in grim determination. She'll outgrow the training wheels in a week, then take a fall, and wish she hadn't been such a smarty-pants.

  Watching Jonah with her, you would never guess he just returned from a forty-day “vision quest”—except for the beard and mustache, along with that new blaze in his eyes, which all together give him the look of an Old Testament prophet. Triss has been watching him so closely, she imagines her own eyes must look like two brown thimbles poking out of her head. She doesn't think he's in danger of going over any edges, but you never know how a person will respond to something like alien abduction. All that crying last night, and he wasn't exactly dry-eyed this morning. But he might be that way even if he hadn't been gone. Jonah is naturally emotional.

  “When are you going to tell him?” Triss asks Zion as they continue to watch father and daughter outdoors. It's a fine sunny day with a few clouds bunched over the rocks to the north. “Tell him what?”

  “Tell him you sold the house!” Triss cracks. Zion knows very well she means the pregnancy. It's all they talked about for the last few days, but now it's hush-hush.

  “When he's ready.”

  “If he's ready tonight, you'll tell him.”

  Zion's downward glance seems to confirm Triss's suspicion. “Are you worried he'll feel obligated to marry you?”

  “I will give birth regardless of what he feels,” she says with a lift of her chin.

  And raise it on fairy rocks, I suppose! Triss does not say. Zion is the deepest woman she has ever met, but for all her depth, she lives with both feet firmly planted in mid-air.

  “I don't know how to do the dance, Triss. You've danced it many times, but I sense it is so natural and inherent for you, you could not teach me…like music. You can teach Coral how to play the instrument, but can you instruct her passion? At any rate, in this society, the male asks the female to dance.” Averting her eyes, she laughs, a private joke. “Jonah and I began on a kind of misstep. I trust he will show me his dance.”

  “Doesn't hurt for a woman to show off her dance. You know how native women dance around a fire? The men can't stand watching them dance alone for long.”

  “Music has made you wise, Triss.”

  “Music and five husbands!”

  Triss had hoped for a few moments alone with Jonah before Avery Bogart arrived for dinner, but he slipped back to his room to take a nap. Restless after an hour of putzing in the kitchen, she decides to go rouse him. Maybe he'll be in a mood to talk a little. Although he seemed as sporting as any father on Christmas, she could tell he was holding back a lot. Who wouldn't after forty days off planet?

  To her dismay she finds him wide awake, slumped in the chair, reading the Bible! Lord, she hopes he isn't going to turn into one of those wild-eyed latter-day prophets. Of all the outcomes, this would be the hardest to accept.

  Jonah looks up from the Bible, as if caught reading the Kamasutra.

  “The flood lasted forty days and Jesus fasted in the wilderness forty days.” Triss folds her arms over her chest.

  “Is that so,” Jonah says.

  “And what was the first thing Noah did after he banked the ark?” Triss asks.

  “Kissed the ground.”

  “Hmmm, and after that he planted a vineyard, and probably before the grapes were even ripe, he made wine and got drunk.”

  “Who can blame him?”

  Triss sits down on the bed. “I was afraid you might have lost your sense of humor.”

  “Who's joking?”

  “Seriously, Jonah. You ought to think about that forty-day thing.”

  “Me and Noah and Jesus. Yeah, right.”

  “And don't forget—Biblical Jonah told the king of Nineveh he had forty days to shape up. And the Israelites ate manna for forty days, and wandered in the desert for forty years. And both King David and King Solomon reigned for forty years each.”

  Jonah looks down at the Bible in his lap, then up at Triss. “How do you know all that?”

  “Took a class. About codes in the Bible. As I recall, forty has something to do with one of the gods in those days. Maybe the Martian god.” She laughs. “I can't remember. You might want to read the works of Zecharia Sitchin's The 12th Planet and six or seven other books. He doesn't go deep into the codes, but he does make a strong case for the idea that the gods and kings of our earliest civilizations were aliens.”

  “God's an alien….”

  “Gods plural. You hadn't heard that assertion before?”

  “Yeah, but…jeez, Aunt Triss.”

  She smiles, glad to see he isn't close to going over any edges. “So what were you reading, if I may be snoopy.”

  “Story of Jonah,” he says, the pink rising on his cheeks.

  “Oh, of course. Why didn't I guess.” She looks at him shrewdly. “Some sa
y the big fish that swallowed him was a water-based UFO.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “You think I'm nuts? Let's see how well you do, explaining to people where you were for forty days.”

  “I doubt anyone was watching the calendar,” he says darkly.

  “But between you and me, you were abducted.”

  “I don't know that for sure.”

  “You're in good company. No one knows for sure. Oh, there are plenty of people who think they know, and I've no doubt their experiences are real. But what kind of real are we talking about?”

  “You're asking me?”

  She swore she wouldn't do it, but she's going to. “You want to know my take on the business?”

  “Sure…” He shrugs.

  “UFOs are provocative, like a woman who can't be possessed. Some men have to play it safe. It's got to be on their turf, by their rules, or they won't even try to possess her. They'll call her a wench not worth having. But men of adventure will pursue her. She's the woman of their dreams. They must have her. But she continuously dances beyond their grasp, and she will keep dancing in the shadows until they find a way to take her.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Triss sighs.

  “How can we believe something so fantastic?” he says.

  “I would think getting abducted helps!”

  “But I don't know that.” His tone is surly.

  “It's normal to feel that way. From what I gather, it's an elusive reality. Maybe the government did haul off some dead aliens from that Roswell crash. Maybe more than anyone, they know they're real. But the rest of us just have to work it out, based on our experience, or what we sense to be true.”