"I don't know," I said, answering Dad's question. "Maybe a cartoon or something."
"Guess we'll see," Dad said. He knew I'd been disappointed when Davy died at the Alamo in the last show. I'd asked him why they couldn't just let Davy live. Seemed to me that Santa Anna's men shouldn't have been any match for the King of the Wild Frontier. Dad had kind of laughed and said that Walt had taken too many liberties with history as it was, that they couldn't very well rewrite Davy's death. I didn't see why not, but I didn't argue.
After Dad left, Mom cleared the dishes and cleaned up Ronnie's mess.
"I'm going to put him down for his nap," she said. "Have fun today. I'll see you at lunch."
She leaned her cheek toward me and I gave her a quick kiss, then put my dishes in the sink and went to grab my baseball glove, which I found under my bed. I paused on the way out of my room, wondering if I should wear the coonskin cap. I wanted to, but the other guys sometimes ribbed me about it if I was wearing it when we weren't playing Davy Crockett or cowboys and Indians, so I left it hanging on the bedpost and wore my baseball cap instead.
The screen banged shut behind me as I ran out the back door. It was already hot. It'd probably get up to a hundred again, Dad had said at breakfast, and he wasn't looking forward to sitting inside a car all day while some teen-ager rode the brake. I didn't blame him. I couldn't figure how he and Mom could stand to be inside on these hot summer days.
As I made my way over to the lot where me and the guys played ball, I made a game of trying to walk only in the shadows, running fast as I could through the sunny patches when they were unavoidable, pretending the soles of my shoes would melt if I tarried too long. When I got there, Pete Blockburger and Ricky Boehner were practicing catching grounders. Steve Hurley was out of town, visiting his grandmother in Marquez for the month, which meant that only Billy Hughes was missing from our group. There were other guys we sometimes hung around with, but the five of us were the main ones.
"How's it going?" Pete called as I slid to a stop near the bare patch of earth we had designated home plate, my sneakers kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Where's Billy?" I asked.
Pete shrugged. "No idea."
That wasn't so unusual. Billy was a year older than us, though he'd been in our class since the second grade. He'd failed out the first time through on account of missing too many days and had been held back. We sometimes teased each other about being so dumb we failed Sandbox, but never Billy. It was a sore subject with him. Billy's dad wasn't around and his mom…well, I'm just glad Mom was my mom and not Mrs. Hughes. Mostly, Billy's older brother took care of him. He was a senior at the high school and in Dad's American Literature class. Dad had talked the principal into letting Ray Hughes take the class, though for all the other subjects, he was on the vocational track. He even got off early every day to go work on the oil rigs outside town, which sounded great to me, but when I'd said as much to Dad he got real serious and told me I'd think differently if I knew what Ray's life was really like.
When Billy was around, he was sort of the leader of our group, and it always felt a little weird without him.
"He'll probably show up later," I said.
I slipped my glove on and gave it a good smack. There weren't enough of us to get up a game, not even close, so we just tossed the ball back and forth and took turns batting. It was an all right way to spend the morning, but I'd rather have been playing Davy Crockett, shooting Indians with Ol' Betsy and defending the Alamo against the Mexican Army—and you can bet Davy and Travis and Jim Bowie would win in our version. They always did.
I lobbed a slowball and Ricky knocked it out of the park. Of the five of us, he was by far the best ball player, though he was also the smallest. We watched as the ball sailed clear out of the lot, landing in a patch of scrubby bushes.
"You hit it, you get it!" me and Pete shouted together. Ricky sighed and went after the ball. It was a job he was used to. I guess it was sort of a punishment for him being too good at bat, but I sure didn't want to dig around in the thorns for the ball.
As we waited for Ricky to find the ball, Pete and me dug up our stash of candy. We kept it buried by an old broken-off fence post on the edge of the lot. Our Moms would've taken it away if we'd tried to bring it in the house and anyway, this way we didn’t have to tote it around with us.
"Pickin's are getting kinda slim," Pete said, opening the cigar box. "Gonna have to make a run down to the trading post to fortify our larder." He said this in a cowboy accent, and I laughed.
"What's left?"
Pete tipped the box so I could see. Inside were a couple of Tootsie Rolls, a few sticks of Wrigley's, and a wadded paper sack I knew contained jawbreakers.
"Give me a jawbreaker."
Pete did, then unwrapped a Tootsie Roll. He was really the only one of us who liked the things, which worked to his advantage.
"Find it yet?" he yelled at Ricky.
Ricky said something unkind about Pete's mom, and then went back to looking. We helped ourselves to more candy, then dropped the cigar box into the hole and kicked dirt back over it.
When we turned around, we saw Billy riding up on his bike. He was pedaling fast enough to beat the band and had a sort of wild look in his eyes that spelled trouble. First thing we figured was some big kids were after him and that we'd better hoof it on out of there in a hurry, but no one was on his heels. He jumped off the bike without coming to a stop, let it roll off on its own before it tipped over.
"You guys!" he said. He was panting and couldn't get out much. "You've gotta—see—this. Right now."
"What?" Pete asked.
"Seriously—it's crazy!" Billy put his hands on his knees, bent over, trying to catch his breath.
Ricky gave up looking for the ball—looked like we'd have to take up a collection for a new one; so much for buying more candy—and came over to where we stood.
"Hey, Billy," he said. "What's going on?"
"It's—it's—"
Billy was struggling to get it out, whether because he was so winded or…I didn't know what.
Pete gave Billy a friendly punch in the arm. "Come on, Big Bill," he said. "It's what?"
"It's a flying saucer, is what it is!"
None of us said anything for a while. The sun beat down, and I could feel the back of my neck getting red. A wind had kicked up, blowing dirt around the empty lot. The only sound was Billy's heavy breathing.
Then Pete started laughing. It was just a chuckle at first, but it grew into full-blown hysterics. It didn't take long until Ricky was laughing too. He was never the first in on a joke, was kinda slow when it came to picking up on things like that, so to make up for it, if someone else was laughing, he'd join in—louder and harder—even if he didn't know what was supposed to be funny.
I wasn't laughing, though. I was looking at Billy's face, and I could tell this wasn't a joke, at least not to him.
"Come on, guys," he said. "Cut it out."
Pete and Ricky just kept on. It was a real knee-slapper.
"I said cut it out!"
Billy shoved Pete, not too hard, but hard enough. Pete lost his balance and landed on his rear. Ricky clammed up quick and of course Pete wasn't laughing anymore. He jumped back up and brushed the dirt from his blue jeans, then went to shove Billy. But Billy was ready for it, and as Pete stepped in, Billy hit him in the stomach. The two of them would have gone at it—we'd all been in fights with each other over the years, but Billy and Pete most of all—but me and Ricky got between them and kept them apart until they'd cooled off. The two of them shook hands, then Billy launched back into his flying saucer story.
"I'm not kidding," he said. "It's an honest-to-God flying saucer."
"Oh yeah?" Pete said. He still thought this was some sort of a joke—and Pete hated to be the butt of the joke.
"Yeah," Billy said.
Pete crossed his arms. "And where is this flying saucer? On the courthouse lawn? Come to talk to our leaders?"
"The woods" weren't really woods, just a medium-sized grove of trees with a creek running through it on the other side of town, just outside the city limits. It was kinda far from where most of us lived, but close enough to Billy's place that we sometimes played there, even though our parents would have had fits if they'd found out. The train tracks cut through a corner of the woods, and a couple of times we'd found evidence of hobos having camped out there. It was a great place for playing all sorts of games, especially Davy Crockett. The scraggly patch of mesquite and live oak didn't compare to the mountaintops of Tennessee, but it was the closest we had.
"How do you know it was last night?" Ricky asked. "That they landed?"
"I was out there after supper yesterday and it wasn't there," Billy explained. "Then this morning, it was." He went and picked up his bike, walked it back over. "So come on! You gotta see it!"
The three of us—Pete, Ricky, and me—all looked at each other, none of us wanting to be the first to agree in case this was a joke, after all.
"Come on!"
Pete sighed, picked up his glove and the bat and slung it over his shoulder.
"This better not be horse hockey, Billy," he said.
It took us most of an hour to walk there. The saucer, Billy said, was down in the gully where the creek bed widened. We all knew the spot. We'd occasionally strip down and go swimming there if the creek was high enough, which it usually wasn't. I thought it was a pretty smart place for the saucer men to park their craft. If you were walking through the woods, you wouldn't be able to see it unless you were looking for it, could walk right past it and not notice it.
Billy left his bike propped against a tree and we followed him through the tangle of trees, bushes, and dead branches. As we got close to the spot, Billy told us to be real quiet. We got down and Army-crawled the last few yards up to the edge of the gully and poked our heads over.
"Holy smoke!" Ricky said.
Billy slapped him in the arm, put a finger over his lips.
"Holy smoke," Ricky repeated, in a whisper.
"'Holy smokes' is right," Pete said.
Billy mouthed the words Told ya!
I couldn't say anything. Couldn't even think anything! Down below us, a few yards up-stream, sat a silver saucer. It shone in the late-morning light. So far as I could see, there wasn't a single rivet or seam in the whole thing. It looked cast from a mold. It wasn't big, about the size of three cars put together and just tall enough that it looked like I might be able to stand up inside. It stood on spindly legs that made me think of a spider. A sound like television static only more low-pitched filled the air. It came from the saucer.
Billy motioned for us to move back. We slid on our bellies until we were a good distance from the edge of the gully, then got up into a crouch and walked even farther away. When we figured we'd gone a safe distance, we stood.
"Holy smoke!" Ricky said again.
"Where do you reckon it came from?" Pete asked.
"From outer space," Billy said. "Where else?"
"Mars?"
Billy shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe Venus. Or heck, it might not even be from our solar system. Who knows?"
"What do you think they want?" I asked. I'd had a bad feeling ever since Billy rode up on his bike. Seeing the saucer, it was like I'd been punched in the stomach. This wasn't good. Not at all.
"What else?" Billy said. "They're tryin' to take over."
Ricky's eyes got wide. "What?"
"Sure," Billy said.
"We don't know that," Pete said, sounding more sure than he looked. "Could be this is just a what-cha-ma-call-it, a probe. Sure. There's probably not even any spacemen in there at all. Just a probe."
"Baloney," Billy said. "That's not what a probe looks like. They're long and pointy and have transmitters on them and stuff. This is a ship, for sure."
We were all experts on extraterrestrials. Ray Hughes let Billy have his old comics when he was done reading them, and Billy was always willing to share them around. Stuff Mom would never have let me buy, even with my own allowance money. True War Stories and Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt. I liked the war comics the best, along with the cowboy ones. Though I watched Captain Video and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet back when they'd still been on television, I didn't really like science fiction. Give me the Lone Ranger over Buck Rogers any day. But the other guys—Billy especially—loved the stuff, the scarier and bloodier the better.
Pete mulled over what Billy had said, about the saucer being a ship and not a probe based on how it looked. Finally, he said, "Okay, so it's a ship. So what do we do?"
"We gotta tell someone," I said. "The police or—"
"Are you out of your mind, David?" Billy said. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. We can't trust anyone!"
"He's right," Pete said. "Don't you remember Billy telling us about It Came from Outer Space?"
Boy, did I remember! We'd been camped out in Steve's backyard, over spring break. Billy hadn't seen the movie, we'd all been little kids when it came out, but Ray had seen it at the drive-in and had told Billy all about it. Billy held a flashlight under his face and laid the whole thing out for us, even doing different voices for the different parts. It was about an alien ship that crash lands out in the desert. In the movie, the aliens can take on the form of whoever they want, which was what Pete was getting at now.
"The police could all be aliens by now, for all we know," Billy said.
"Heck," Pete said, "We can't even trust our parents."
"What? Nu-uh," Ricky said. He was sort of a mama's boy.
"It's true," Billy said. "In fact, anyone in town might actually be an alien."
We took a second to let that to sink in. Ricky looked a little like he might cry. He did a lot, and we all gave him a hard time about it.
Pete's eyes fell on Billy. "Wait a second," he said. "How do we know… We're supposed to believe you found this saucer and the aliens just let you come blab to us about it?"
"Yeah. I mean, they're still inside the ship. They didn't see me or anything."
"Or did they?" Pete cocked an eyebrow. I loved when he did that. I'd tried in the mirror for hours to learn how, but never could.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Billy asked.
"It means, how do we know you're you?"
"Of course I'm me! We got a problem here. Let's not waste time arguing over stupid stuff."
"That's what an alien would say," Pete said.
Billy looked to me and Ricky for help. I couldn't look him in the eye, pretended to scrape some mud off my shoe onto a fallen log.
"You gotta prove it," Pete said. "Prove you're you."
"How am I supposed to do that?" Billy said.
This stumped us all, until Ricky spoke up. "The handshake!"
"Yeah," I said. "That's it. No way an alien would know that."
Pete thought it over, decided we were right. He held out his hand. "Come on," he said. "If you're really Billy, do the secret handshake."
Billy rolled his eyes, walked over and did the complicated gestures of our secret handshake—the one we'd spent months perfecting—without a hitch.
"Satisfied I'm not a spaceman?" he said after the finishing double-snap.
"Sure, Billy," I said.
"We knew you weren't really an alien," Ricky said.
"We just had to make sure," Pete said. "You understand."
"Sure, I understand. Now can we get down to business? We gotta do something."
We all agreed with Billy that something had to be done, but none of us knew what. After arguing about it for a while, I said, "Let's take another look at it," though I really didn't want to. If it was up to me, we would have gone back to the lot and finished
playing ball, left the saucer and its crew for someone else to find. It was cowardly, I knew, not at all how Davy would have handled things, but I was scared. I thought maybe if we looked again, we'd find that the ship had taken off silently or that we'd been wrong and that it really was just an unmanned probe or…well, I didn't really know.
"Yeah, all right," Billy said. "Let's take another look."
We Army-crawled back to the edge of the gully and peeked over.
My eyes just about bugged out of my head.
A section of the saucer had opened up and a ramp was extended that reached to the ground. Three saucer men were milling about. They looked to be about our same height, but they were hairless and gray-skinned. Their huge eyes looked like the eyes of a fly, shiny and silver. They had two fingers and a thumb on each hand and wore some sort of skin-tight jumpsuits and carried strange instruments. One of them knelt down by the creek and dipped a long metal tube into the water. Another waved a wand over the base of a nearby live oak, while the third just sort of walked around in circles. He had something in his hand. It didn't look like any ray gun I'd seen in Ray Hughes's comics, but somehow I knew that's just what it was.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked over at Billy. He motioned for me to follow him back into the woods. Pete and Ricky were already gone. I hadn't even noticed.
We found them all the way back at the edge of the woods. Ricky was concentrating really hard on the ground, his upper lip tucked into his lower teeth, trying not to cry. I wouldn't've made fun of him if he had, and I don't think Pete and Billy would have either. Pete looked as pale as milk and Billy's cheeks blazed red. I don't know what I looked like, but it was all I could do to keep from shaking.
"What do we do?" I asked. "Billy, we gotta tell someone. We got to!"
Billy swatted the back of my head. It smarted, which helped.
"We already been over that, David!" he said. "We can't!"
"Let's just go," Ricky said, a quiver in his voice.
"And let them take over the town? You saw what they were doing, poisoning the creek. They probably think that's the town's water supply. When they figure out it's not, they'll come in both guns blazing."
Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within Page 13
