“Maybe by birth he is,” Dibs says, pondering, “but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the heart part. They all had it. Remember when Jor-El and Lara put him on the space vessel as Krypton was exploding? They sacrificed themselves for him to live here on Earth. That’s heart.”
“I guess.”
“Maybe the Army Air Force will help the Martian,” Dibs says. “Bring him to the base hospital and help get him back to his family. You think the Army Air Force has a heart for Martians?”
“What if they don’t?” I ask. “What if they keep him prisoner and he never gets back home ever again? What if his family has to wonder where he is, too? Wonder why he isn’t back home with them?”
“So maybe we do something more.”
“We?” I say. “I thought you raised your hand back there, along with the others.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I changed my mind,” he says. “I may not be a Cracker Jack superhero like you, but I have enough stuffing in me to declare myself your Jimmy Olsen.”
“Don’t you get it yet? There’s nothing special about me,” I tell him. “Not one single thing. I don’t know why you can’t see that.”
“I see what I see, and what I see,” he says, “is that you’re the closest thing to a superhero I’ve known here on Earth.”
I wipe my eyes with my forearm. “Just ’cause a box of Cracker Jacks says so?”
“No. On account of the courage I see…even before Cracker Jacks knew about you. What you did today,” he says, shaking his head. “Going inside the disk and then deciding to go back when the rest of us chickened out…that was something, all right.”
“Yeah, well, I sure don’t feel very brave.”
“You want to know why else I think you got a whole lot of courage stuffed up in you?”
I nod.
He turns his head toward the house. “You keep on going,” he says, real quiet this time. “You keep on, even after Obie died. Especially on the days you might not want to. And I know there are those days, even though you don’t say it out loud. Because I know you.”
I look up the drive now, too.
“He’s home,” Dibs says, jutting a chin at his daddy’s rusty Ford pickup parked in front of the house. “Probably wondering where I’ve been.”
“Just come home with me,” I tell him. “Momma’s making your favorite for dinner tonight. Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and her famous lumpy gravy.”
He shakes his head. “Can’t,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask him. “Why can’t you?”
“ ’Cause I haven’t been here all day. I have to see what’s happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what if this is the day Momma comes back for me?” He rubs at the saddle horn in his hand. “What if Daddy’s drank so much that he doesn’t pen up the pigs right and they get out? We already don’t have the money for Mr. Funk and, well, if we lost the pigs, too…it’d be real bad. What if Mr. Funk comes back early and no one is here and he decides to take what we have?”
I don’t know what to say to all that.
“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
I nod. “So long.”
“So long.” He shakes the reins and kicks True Belle’s fat belly.
I watch after him as he goes.
I watch while he makes it up the drive, then slides off True Belle and finally trudges up the front porch steps.
Awaiting his doom.
I watch long after he lets the screen door slam behind him and the yelling starts.
It hurts my heart to listen and not be able to do anything, so I kick Pitch’s belly and get on my way home. The silence of the stifling desert air all around me stings my ears and aches me to my bones with every step.
No more whispers.
No more screams.
Nothing.
I pull the Superhero Club Membership Card out of my pocket as I ride, running a finger over the words. Words that aren’t mine.
Words that will never be.
I rip it in half first, and then I rip it again and again and again until all that’s left is tiny pieces, and I throw them up over my head and into the wind. Then I kick my heels into Pitch’s belly even harder.
“Yah!” I scream.
She starts into a trot and moves into a full-on gallop, breaking away from it all.
I shake the reins again.
Faster.
But no matter how long her strides, the gray is always just one arm’s reach away.
It’s dark and it’s deep and you can never find your way out. The air inside it hurts your lungs and your skin, worse than any scrape or sore. It’s an ache that pains every part of you and takes your strength and your breath.
It takes everything.
It’s an agony that reaches so deep inside and holds on so tight you don’t think you’ll ever breathe again.
And you’re not sure you even want to.
“Please let me be!” I holler back over my shoulder.
But the gray never listens.
* * *
I pass the ranch and Corona General, too.
I ride without stopping as Pitch takes long, sleek strides down Highway 54 and through the iron gates, running until I reach the one and only place where I know you are.
Even though I can’t feel you there, either.
OBIE BROOKS AFFINITO
SEPTEMBER 6, 1934–MAY 27, 1946
BELOVED SON, BROTHER, FRIEND
WE WILL NEVER FORGET.
NO ONE BRAVER.
I slip down off Pitch and drop to the ground in a pile of bones, throwing my arms around the cool stone marking his place in this world.
And I cry.
I cry like I’ll never ever stop.
Never ever catch my breath.
Never ever breathe again.
“I miss you,” I choke out through the tears filling my throat, my warm cheek against the cool, slick stone.
Silence.
“Can’t you hear me, Obie?” I scream at the sky. “It’s Mylo. Your brother. I can’t find you!”
Low thunder grumbles in the west.
“I’ve gone and done it again…promised something I had no business promising. And I messed that up, too. I can’t fix it and God isn’t listening. I know you’re here somewhere. I know you can hear me. Please just answer me!” I beg the sky. “Tell me what it takes to be as brave as you!”
Bucket-sized tears stream down from my lashes and drip off my chin and out my nose and I let them.
“Maybe you’re mad at me?” I ask, squeezing his stone even tighter. “Because I couldn’t keep my promise to you? And that one was on a spit shake, which makes it a million times worse. But you made one to me, too. You said you wouldn’t leave me. You promised you wouldn’t. No matter what, you promised. But I can’t find you. Not even here. You’re just gone and you shouldn’t be. This wasn’t supposed to be the end of your story.”
Silence.
“And you want to know what else?” My voice catches. “I knew it was a lie when I said it,” I tell him. “I knew it but I said it anyway because I wanted it to be true. But maybe you lied, too.”
Nothing.
“I tried, though,” I tell him, dropping my chin to my chest and wrapping my arms around my knees. “I prayed with all I had in me. And I hoped. Back when I had hope in me, I did.”
A gust whips up, blowing gravel, and one tumbleweed gets stuck against Gracie’s great-great-grandmother.
VALENTINA GRACIELA DELGADO
JULY 4, 1862–DECEMBER 2, 1933
BEAUTIFUL, STRONG, KIND.
A SPIRIT TO BE RECKONED WITH.
I wipe my nose on my forearm again. “Nothing I did worked,” I say. “And now
you’re gone. Gone from this place, gone from the house…and gone from me. Shortstop is even gone now, too.”
I lie down on my back against the sharp pebbles, staring up at the darkening storm clouds above me, letting the tears run straight into my ears.
“I need you to come home,” I tell the sky. “It’s the only way your ending can be right.”
* * *
Help.
I jump to my feet when I hear it, peeking around Obie’s headstone and scanning around the other stones that mark very important places in this world.
I look over at Mr. Beckman, wondering if he heard it, too.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
PIERMONT BECKMAN
APRIL 1, 1842–JANUARY 4, 1899
“Did you hear that, Mr. Beckman?” I ask him.
But he doesn’t answer me, either.
“Hello?” I call out. “Is someone out there? Mrs. Delgado? You hear something?”
Silence.
I squeeze my eyes shut and listen hard.
“Hello?” I say again.
This time I hear something that almost knocks me right off the heels of my boots.
Mylo.
“Y-you…” I swallow. “You…know me?”
Nothing.
“I want to help you,” I tell him. “I really want to. But you picked the wrong boy. I’m missing my courage part.”
No one answers.
“It’s just gone!” I shout out to the sky.
Silence.
“And God left out the muscles, too.”
Still nothing.
“Hello? D-do you hear me?” I call. “Did you hear me about picking someone else?” I plop my bag of bones back down on the ground, my brain feeling too worn out to do anything more.
An owl hoots at me from somewhere in the distance.
And something scuffles in the dirt.
I shoot straight up again, scanning between headstones and past trees. It’s getting dark now, with another summer monsoon rolling in.
Wind whooshes.
Gravel rustles.
Thunder rumbles.
And then a footstep.
My neck stretches left, then right. “Are you there?”
And another footstep.
“Dibs?” I call, squinting into the darkness. “If that’s you trying to scare me, you’ll be sorry.”
Silence.
I know it’s Dibs.
It’s got to be. He’ll jump out with a bloodcurdling Boo! and get a couple of big yuks about it, too. He’ll yuk it up for weeks, reminding me of it. Like that time he hid in the chicken coop and Boo!ed me something awful two winters ago. It took him nine whole months to forget about it.
Of course it’s Dibs.
Thunder rolls and I feel a drop of rain hit my shoulder, and then another one.
The thick air sticking against me.
“I know it’s you, Dibs,” I call out, putting my hands on my hips. “You’re not funny.”
The thunder answers me first and then the wind.
I watch the tumbleweed let loose from Mrs. Delgado and move on toward the black iron fence.
“Dibs?” I call, louder this time. “If it’s you, I’m going to give you a knuckle sandwich so hard that—”
Another footstep and then a scuffle and then…
An eye.
One big black eye peering out at me from behind Mrs. Vandebrink.
HERE LIES LILLIAN VANDEBRINK
AUGUST 14, 1802–MAY 22, 1888
FRED’S WIFE AND ELMER’S MOTHER
R.I.P.
An extra-large gray hairless head is watching me.
Four long, skinny fingers wrapped around the stone.
Fingers with pointy black fingernails and suction cups where the fingerprints are supposed to go.
I suck air and freeze in fear, my eyeballs stuck on the large black eyes watching me.
Me.
Mylo Affinito.
Then the hand is reaching toward me.
Closer.
Closer.
There’s something clasped between the gray fingers.
He takes a step out from behind the stone. And then another one, until he’s standing close to me, in a silky tan flight suit that’s as tight as his skin. At least two heads shorter than me and one shorter than Dibs. He’s skinny, too. Even skinnier than Dibs is, if that’s even possible. Like six-year-old-boy skinny, with a watermelon-sized head. Purple hieroglyphics are printed up and down one arm, just like on the shattered pieces out in the desert.
I stand frozen.
My feet cemented to the ground as he reaches one hand slowly toward me. It’s just as Dibs said it would be. Interstellar Martians here to suck our brain out our ears as soon as look at us.
Something is inside his hand as he reaches closer.
Ming the Merciless’s Purple Death.
Martian mind-control at its best.
A teleportation device from the future powered on and ready to beam me up to the waiting mother ship.
Why didn’t I listen to Dibs when I had the chance?
The visitor drops whatever’s in his hand at my feet.
Dibs would warn me about a clever Martian distraction to catch me off guard so that when I take my eyes off him…Ka-pow! My brains are sucked out of me in a single second.
I slowly peel my eyes from his, glancing down at the dirt in front of me. Then back at him and then back at the dirt again.
I drop to my knees and scoop the small brown bear from the ground.
Shortstop.
I carefully dust the red dirt off him, and then bring him slowly up in front of my nose.
I close my eyes tight.
And I breathe him in.
Right between his ears where the fur is loved almost clean off.
I fill my lungs as full as they will go and hold all of our memories inside me until I have to breathe them back out again.
Obie.
He’s there.
The oil from his leather catcher’s mitt and the dirt from the pitcher’s mound we built out back.
And his courage.
July 7, 1947—6:05 p.m.
It’s a million degrees in the hayloft, and a wicked wind is starting up outside.
I can’t say exactly how we got from the cemetery to the hayloft except that he took my hands in his and made some weird sounds and then there was this strange pulling inside me and then a haze of clouds and dreams. Like I was sleeping but wide awake at the same time.
And then I was home.
With a tiny gray man from outer space.
I scurried him up to the hayloft before Daddy finished in the field and went to wash up with the Ivory for supper.
The smells of Momma’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes and her famous bourbon pecan pie weave in and out of the open door of the hayloft, reminding me I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Momma’s uneaten summer sausage sandwiches spoiling in the heat, still in my saddlebag.
We sit staring at each other.
Me and him.
Me, melting in the summer heat. Him, dry as a bone.
Drips run down my temples. Buds bead up over my top lip. Streams slide down between my shoulder blades.
I wipe my forearm over my forehead and through my wet hair.
“You don’t get hot, huh?” I ask him.
If I had my tablet now, I would make a list of questions to ask a man from Mars that would take up every page.
Front and back.
And I bet there wouldn’t be one single line with a question as dumb as what I just asked.
Not even at the very bottom of the list when I was running out of questions. My tongue tastes the salt from the sweaty beads on my
lips. I can’t take my eyes off him. Wondering what’s the best thing to ask.
“You speak English?” I ask him.
He blinks at me with his gargantuan, glassy black eyes. Considering me, as his hairless eyebrow bones go up and down, wrinkling and unwrinkling his sweatless forehead.
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me through those eyes.
An Earth Martian.
Five strange, suction cup–less fingers on each hand.
Fine hair everywhere but the upper lip, where it’s supposed to be.
Rivers of sweat.
His bony bald brow wrinkles up and then down. Up and then down. He’s examining me. I wonder what’s on his list of questions. He probably wouldn’t ask anything about the sweat. I wipe my face again with the back of my hand.
That one goes without saying.
“Mylo!” Momma calls from the front porch. “Supper is ready!”
If only Momma could know. But she can’t. No one can. We all made a pact at the arroyo. And if I were to ever break that pact, Momma would be the very last person I would tell, even though she’s one of the first people I want to tell. She’d have me scrubbing to Z with the sloppy bar of Ivory until the end of time.
“Coming!” I holler.
“There is so much I want to ask you,” I whisper to him. “I figure you know a whole lot of things on account of your head being so big and all. No offense or anything. It’s not a bad thing to be bigheaded. Lots of people have big heads. I mean, not as big as yours, of course, but…well, Dibs says it’s ’cause of you being so big-brained. So it’s a good thing and it suits you. You’re probably real smart, is all I’m trying to say.”
His big black eyes blink at me.
“On the other hand, your ears are nothing but holes,” I tell him. “Makes me wonder if you can hear me at all.”
He tilts his head.
“I keep asking you questions that aren’t on my list…if I had a list, that is. If I had made a list of things I’d want to ask a real live Martian,” I tell him. “But who makes a list like that? Who expects they’re going to have a face-to-face meeting with a man from Mars? Sorry…I don’t know why I keep rambling on…just nervous, I s’pose.”
I watch as the Martian adjusts his fine-threaded tan flight suit, which looks more like a second skin than fabric.
The Truth About Martians Page 12
