Chapter 9 - A Heavy Metal Party
We hatch a plan after a few more nights downing beers and watching the lights twinkle from the bench atop the ridge. The smartmen are too preoccupied with the saucers zipping about to pay any attention to common, dumb folk like ourselves. The smartmen likely have too much work to do if they want to learn an alien's language to think of us. That task, no doubt, requires all of the smartmen's concentration.
Those of us not confined to the plastic bubbles hope to communicate a very simple message to those flying saucers, something that doesn't require an new alphabet or new vocabulary terms. All of us are hoping that what we have to say is very easy to understand.
Ray Ray jostles up to me, his belly swaying beneath his sleeveless, white t-shirt. "I got all those tires soaking real good in the gasoline. It's only going to take a spark to get them smoking. The wind's not going to have anything to say about it."
"Remember, Ray Ray, no fires until you hear me blare the foghorn," I respond. "That means no smoking or drinking while you wait to hear it. No bottlerockets until it's time. I don't want any accidents."
Ray Ray winks. "I promise you don't need to worry about me."
I don't very much trust Ray Ray with all the temptations surrounding him in the field at the base of that mountainside that holds the giant radio. Pyrotechnic sparklers wait to burn and whistle. We've loaded barrels with cherry bombs. We've crowded crates with smoke bombs. There are propane tanks and blow torches. The community has brought to our field anything capable of making a boom or a mushroom cloud. If it's flammable, it's waiting in that field. I wish I could see it all myself, but my plan's too big. Thus I have to rely on help, and I have to pray that Ray Ray will resist his urge to throw the first match on top of it all before I blare my foghorn.
I try not to worry about Ray Ray as I stroll through the excited crowd of my neighbors to locate a grinning Joe Bob.
"You're a genius, Jimmy Jack," Joe Bob squeezes me in a bear hug. "Just look at all those women. Allie Amy. Lucy Lee. Miranda Mary. Even Suzie Sarah. And they're all as naked as you wanted them. No smartman's ever worked that kind of genius."
I wouldn't call myself exactly young, but my blood's not ready to yet admit its age. My eyes want to stare at that nude assembly of the community's most attractive, feminine figures as badly as any other man's. Only, all those ladies are just another part of my plan, and I have to keep my focus if I want to get my message across to those little, green aliens.
"Remember, Joe Bob, they're not naked for us."
Joe Bob's face gives no indication that he's heard me. "Do you think any of them are going to need any help with all the paint? Do you think it would be a good idea to offer my help to make sure they cover all the hard-to-reach places?"
"I think it's a terrible idea, Joe Bob."
The ladies are covering themselves in orange, red, blue, purple and green paint. They're painting war stripes across their faces. They're streaking lines of glow-in-the-dark pigments down their spine and around their nipples and navels. I peek long enough at the girls to feel my blood stir. Yogi would think the sight most savage, and that's the very reason why I wanted those girls in my plan. I don't stare any longer, because staring won't make preparing my plan any easier.
"Is the mud ready?" Joe Bob fails to respond, so I twist his bottom lip to refocus his concentration. "Is the mud ready? We have to have the track real sloppy if we want the hovermudders to throw that muck high enough into the air. It's been a dry season. Have you had the hoses on long enough?"
"I've left them on all night."
"And is it working?"
"Why wouldn't it work? Doesn't take any smartman to tell you what happens when you flood a hovermudder track all night and day."
"Check anyway, Joe Bob."
"But the girls."
"I said check anyway."
Joe Bob sighs as he takes one final stare at the girls before stomping off towards the hovermudder race track to inspect the mud. There are so many pieces to plan. Everything must fall perfectly, and all of it has to go down without a single bit of advice proffered by the smartmen. But I can hear the hovermudders revving their engines, a good sign that there will be plenty of vehicles to loft their mud into the air once I give the signal on my foghorn.
"Hurry over here, Jimmy Jack! Check out how I have my tape deck plugged straight into that giant radio!"
Kurt Larry stands before a stack of ancient stereo components. A hastily-built platform of two-by-fours and plywood holds the components up off of the mud. Thick cords of black and orange wires tangle together behind the stack, one cord running to a throbbing diesel generator, the others rising along the mountainside into all those speakers Yogi tricked me into installing, a few more wires running further to plug into the giant radio, the very instrument through which the smartmen are currently speaking to the aliens.
"Will it work?"
Kurt Larry frowns. "Why you asking me? It's your plan."
"Will your tape deck play through the radio?"
"It'll roar," Kurt Larry answers with a chuckle. "Those schematics weren't so hard to figure out after I just sat down and concentrated on them. It's not a very crooked path to get all the wires hooked up just so. If the smartmen didn't want us to learn how to fiddle with their radio, they should never have given us those plans and tasked us with the work to build it."
I smile for the first time all afternoon.
Kurt Larry adjusts some knobs on his stereo equipment. "The old metal band Tornado Medusa is going to flat-out shake the mountain when those drums and guitars roar out of the radio."
I grin. "I want that volume summoning the dead from their graves, Kurt Larry."
"Oh, I promise that you'll have it."
I figure that all of the details of my plan are as good as they're going to get. There's nothing left to do but take my seat on that bench at the foot of that radio and stare at the sky until all those flying saucers start zipping around and blinking at us. My fingers dance upon the foghorn's trigger. I want to blast it so badly. I'm not used to having to wait when I want to see fireworks so bad. I pray that Ray Ray will hold out long enough to give me a chance to blare that foghorn.
Jimmy Jack and the Smartman Page 11
