“Gracie,” I say. “A-are they looking for anything else?”
She bites on her lower lip. “That’s the question,” she says softly.
“Mylo,” Dibs says. “What now?”
“Moon Shadow…KA-POW!”
We all shield our eyes and look up at Moon Shadow leaning on the sill of my bedroom window and waving a comic book between two of her long, skinny gray fingers. Today she’s wearing a stiff, clean pair of brand-new overalls that Momma picked up at the Montgomery Ward’s in Roswell so that she could wash the Chocolate Swirl out of Moon Shadow’s flight suit and hang it on the line with the rest of the laundry.
Clark Kent lifts a drowsy head from the top porch step, still minding his post after I assigned him the duty to protect Moon Shadow at all costs.
“She may not know Superman, but she sure likes him.” Dibs smiles up at her.
“We have to protect her,” Gracie tells me.
I nod.
“And we have to get her home,” Gracie says.
I nod again. “No matter what the Army Air Force says or does, they can’t erase everything,” I tell them. “No matter how hard they try to.”
Dibs’s and Gracie’s eyes meet mine in silent agreement.
“If all they’re doing is looking for pieces, that means they still don’t know about her. And if they do know about her…well, either way, we have to have a plan to hide her.”
“Where?” Gracie says. “Is there any safe place in Corona where no one will go looking for her?”
“KA-BLAM!” Moon Shadow calls from the window.
“I brought some things with me today,” Gracie says. “Books and homemade flash cards, and I’m going to help her learn more words.”
My running list of the greatness that is Gracie Delgado:
Her heart.
I put my hand in the middle of our three-person circle, Gracie puts hers on top of mine, and Dibs puts his on top of hers.
A promise. A very important one, too. A promise that means life or…death.
And it’s all up to us.
Dibs turns to Gracie again. “Gracie?”
“Yes?”
“Can you field a baseball?”
Gracie’s eyebrows scrunch together. “What does baseball have to do with anything?”
Dibs smiles, showing me his big beaver teeth. “Actually, a lot more than you’d think.”
July 9, 1947—10:35 a.m.
After chores Dibs and I head on over to Mr. Lord’s place with a loaf of Momma’s bread under my arm while Gracie stays back with Moon Shadow.
“Mr. Lord?” I call through the ripped screen. “You here?”
“Of course he’s here. Where else would he be?” Dibs whispers.
I give him an elbow to the ribs.
“It’s me, Mr. Lord…Mylo Affinito, and Dibs Butte, too.”
Heavy footsteps pound the floorboards, making their way to the screen door.
Today he stares silently at us through the ripped screen like a rabid dog who’s lost his bark. His white hair is still in need of a dab of Brylcreem and his dingy plaid bathrobe is pulled tight around his skinny middle.
I hold out Momma’s bread. “Zucchini,” I tell him.
I hear Dibs croak a swallow.
Mr. Lord pushes open the screen door. “Tell your momma I said thank you kindly,” he says, taking the bread.
I reach inside my bib pocket and pull out my Superhero Club Membership Card for him to see.
He takes it and examines it, flipping it over and then over again. He stares down at me from under the heavy wrinkles. “What do you want me to do with this?” he asks me.
“She fixed it,” I say.
“Who did?”
This time it’s me who croaks a swallow. “I think you know who,” I tell him.
His brow lowers over his bloodshot eyes just like the shady awnings over the Corona General Store’s front windows.
He does know. I can see it in his eyes.
“I told you to leave it be, didn’t I?” he says. “Let me guess, you’re one of the ones that were out there, aren’t you?” He shakes his head. “The ones they’re looking for.”
I can feel Dibs’s eyes on me.
“I told you it’s too dangerous, didn’t I? They’ll figure it out and come looking for you. This is a level of clearance that is so top secret only a handful of people know about it. And you kids aren’t in that group. Don’t you understand what could happen to you? Someone messed up and released this story to the press and a bomb exploded. People from all over the world calling and wondering if we are under attack. So now they’re covering it all up. Saying it was all a mistake. And they are going to great lengths to fix this mess. You don’t even have a clue as to what you’re up against.”
“T-treason?” Dibs squeaks out.
“Go home,” Mr. Lord says. “Roller-skate. Play your games. Be kids. Leave it alone.”
I straighten my shoulders and stand as tall as I can, like a dutiful soldier ready to face a battle. “I can’t, Mr. Lord,” I say.
He shakes his head again.
“What are all those ones and zeroes in your tablet?” I ask him. “It has to do with…them, doesn’t it?”
“Leave those Martians be!” he barks. “You hear me?”
“Ah, excuse me, Mr. Lord.” Dibs points a finger in the air. “But, um, technically…they’re Moontians, not Martians.”
Mr. Lord stares hard at Dibs.
“ ’Cause they ain’t from Mars. They’re from one of the moons orbiting Jupiter. Get it? Europa, to be exact.”
Mr. Lord doesn’t say anything.
“And also, when someone needs help, you help ’em,” Dibs goes on. “That’s what it says in the Bible, anyway. I mean, not those exact words or anything, but something like that, because no one really knows what the Bible means, they just do the best they can.” He leans close to me. “Did I get what Gracie said right?” he whispers.
I nod.
Mr. Lord explodes. “You don’t think I know what the Bible says, boy?”
“Well, that’s sort of hard to say, really, ’cause, you know, because, ah…well, you’re never in church on Sundays,” Dibs mutters. “No offense, but you’re the only one who’s not, so I figure maybe you don’t.”
“How do you boys know those men are from a moon orbiting Jupiter?” Mr. Lord asks him.
Dibs points a thumb in my direction. “On account of his eyelids,” he says.
Mordecai Lord eyes me.
“I know because she told me,” I say.
“She?”
“The Moontian,” I tell him. “A boy and a girl. Two of them survived, Mr. Lord. One is at the base hospital and one…well, one is…”
Dibs shakes his head at me. “Don’t tell—”
“One…is in our house,” I tell Mr. Lord. “Moon Shadow. She’s at home with us.”
The scowl on Mr. Lord’s face falls off him in slow motion and his lips form a stern, straight line.
But he has no words.
I guess even Mordecai Lord, with all his military history, needs his Mississippis to get used to the idea of Moontians visiting us.
“Mr. Lord, we need your help,” I tell him. “They need your help. We’re going to get them back home. With or without you. But I figure with you, we have a better chance at it.”
He hesitates.
“Nope,” he says then. “Nope. It’s just too dangerous. Especially for children. I said you need to leave it be and that’s it.”
“Are they really sending you messages, Mr. Lord?” I keep on.
He scratches at his chin whiskers and chews at the hairs that hang too long over his upper lip.
“They are,” I say. “And they have been for a while, too.�
��
“On your eyelids?” Dibs asks him.
“Please, Mr. Lord,” I say.
He fills his cheeks and then blows a gush of air out of his mouth.
“Come on,” he says, stepping aside in the doorway. “I can show you, but you can’t tell anyone.”
Dibs and I look at each other.
“You mean…inside?” Dibs squeaks again, pointing a finger at the doorway.
We both stretch our necks and peer through the screen door.
It’s dark in there even though the sun is shining on the outside, with ratty drapes and tattered, yellowing shades pulled down over the front windows. There’s a small wooden table with all the chairs pushed in and dirty dishes piled high in the sink and an open cupboard filled with jars of Skippy Creamy. And one large boiling pot on the stove.
Dibs wide-eyes me. “That some kind of stew you got cooking up there?” he asks.
“That’s right,” Mr. Lord says. “Are you coming or what?”
I straighten up again and take a long, deep breath. “Yes,” I say, taking a step across the threshold. Behind me, my tried-and-true assistant.
My Jimmy Olsen.
The screen door bangs behind us and we blink to help our eyes adjust to the darkness.
“You want something to eat?” Mr. Lord asks.
“Y-you mean from the pot on the stove?” Dibs stutters.
“No,” Mr. Lord says. “That’s rabbit stew…won’t be ready for hours yet. I got peanut butter, though. And I have spoons. And zucchini bread, of course.”
“N-no, no, thank you, sir,” I say, pressing my lips together.
“Come on back this way.” Mr. Lord waves his hand at us as he trudges through a maze of stacked boxes and large books to the back sitting room behind the kitchen.
We follow him to a place that should have a davenport, a reclining chair, and a radio like anyone else’s sitting room, except Mordecai Lord has a big wooden desk with a rusted lamp and tall bookshelves filled with large grown-up books that look like the science section at the Roswell library.
Newspaper articles litter the walls. Some tacked up and some stuck up with yellowing tape. All of them with headlines about flying disks that people have been seeing in the skies all over the United States and beyond.
On the corner of the desk stands a large wooden picture frame. A woman, her arms wrapped around a boy about my age.
Mordecai Lord Jr.
I know him by name only on account of when you live in a town as small as Corona, you usually know everyone’s business.
Whether you want to or not.
Some details true and others not.
I pick up the frame and stare down at the smiling faces. The same kind of smiles as the ones on me and Obie in the picture on the night table between our beds. The kind your mouth smiles when you think endings happen the way they should every time.
Even when they don’t.
“Is this your family?” I ask Mr. Lord.
He nods without saying anything, sits down in a cracking leather chair, and rolls himself closer to his desk.
“Sorry,” I tell him, setting the frame down again.
He’s focused on the radios. “Sorry for you, too,” he says. “It isn’t right.”
“No,” I agree.
He clears his throat. “This is what I wanted to show you,” he tells us, turning the knobs on the dusty radios lined up in front of him.
Stacks of tablets are piled by dates and years. The 1947 tablets in this pile and the 1946 tablets in that one. In front of him sits a large black microphone.
“What is all this?” I ask as Dibs leans in to read the articles tacked to the walls.
“It’s my ham radio setup,” Mr. Lord says.
“Do you get The Adventures of Superman on that thing?” Dibs asks.
Mr. Lord snuffs a chuckle out his nose. “Not exactly,” he says. “Not that kind of radio.”
Dibs loses interest then and goes back to the articles.
“Have a seat.” Mr. Lord motions to some stacked boxes on the floor next to his chair. “This is a communication device. I can pick up certain signals—let me show you what I’ve been doing.”
I slip one hip down on top of a box marked CLOTHES in messy handwriting.
“Hey,” Dibs calls out. “This one on the Battle of Los Angeles?” He squints and leans in closer. “An actual picture?” he asks. “This is the disk they tried to shoot up? This is an actual picture of it?”
“Weather balloon,” Mr. Lord scoffs.
“Mrs. Manuela told us all about it. Fourteen hundred rounds and they couldn’t take down a weather balloon. Who would have thought they would come up with the same stupid excuse? Again. Like we don’t have eyes.”
“It’s all need-to-know,” Mr. Lord says, still focusing on the radio dials.
“Yeah, but who decides who needs to know and when they can know it?” Dibs asks. “Because we need to know a bunch of stuff and no one seems to want to tell us any of it.”
Mordecai Lord is busy turning dials and flipping switches. “The government believes that people cannot accept the possibility that there might be life on other planets. They think all religious and financial institutions would fail and people would go nuts.”
Dibs raises his eyebrow at me. “Nuts, you say?”
“Do you think that would happen?” I ask Mr. Lord.
“I think the public deserves to know the truth,” he tells me. “That’s why I left the military when I did. I was involved with this at a very high level and I wanted to tell the public and they wanted to keep it a secret.”
“That’s why you left?” Dibs asks.
“Didn’t really have a choice,” Mr. Lord tells us, still turning dials. “They made that decision for me. But they call me back every time they receive new signals from outer space. And again now after the crash, to read the binary messages coming through.”
He continues to turn dials left and then right.
Right and then left.
Fuzzy static and then a click. Static and then a beep.
Then snippets of voices in between bouts of fuzz.
“You think that was another flying disk, Mr. Lord? Like the one in Los Angeles?” Dibs pulls up a chair right next to Mr. Lord now that he’s his longtime friend and not the fried-bat-eating man feared by all the kids in all the land.
“It was absolutely an interplanetary vehicle of some kind,” Mr. Lord tells him. “And they know it, too.”
“No ifs, ands, or buts about it?” Dibs asks.
“Not a one.” Mr. Lord nods once like he really means it.
More static.
Dibs picks up a plaque from the desk and examines it closely. “What was your rank?” he asks.
“What? No, never made it all the way to a four-star. I was a two-star. A major general.”
Dibs seems satisfied with that answer and sets the plaque down again. “When were you in?” he asks.
“A long time ago,” Mr. Lord replies.
“So you weren’t a spy, then?” Dibs asks.
Another snuffed chuckle escapes Mr. Lord’s nose. “Well, if I was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that, would I?”
Dibs snuffs his own chuckle. “S’pose not,” he says.
“It’s here somewhere,” Mr. Lord says. “I know it’s here somewhere. I just had it this morning.”
“Are you saying there were flying disks visiting Earth way back when you were in the military, too?” I ask Mr. Lord.
“That’s right.”
“I thought you said they came because of the bombs.” Dibs leans over Mr. Lord to look at me.
Mr. Lord stops adjusting his dials and stares at me, too.
“I said that’s why they came this time. She didn’t say anything abo
ut other visits.”
“The atom bomb?” Mr. Lord asks me.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “They said the nuclear radiation is damaging our planet and everyone else’s, too, and they come here to see what we’re doing.”
“And you know this how?”
“His eyelids,” Dibs says. “Remember?”
Mr. Lord doesn’t say anything.
“She’s starting to learn our language, but before that she was communicating directly to my mind—”
“Telepathically,” Dibs announces proudly with his chin up and his big beaver teeth showing.
“And she has this headbandy thing,” I go on. “For communication and translation.”
“I know exactly what you’re thinking, Mr. Lord, but you don’t need to worry none,” Dibs reassures him. “They didn’t harvest brains. I made good and sure of it.” He gives me an elbow in my side. “Go ahead and tell him about the whole tomato guts thing.”
I watch the corners of Mr. Lord’s mouth turn up until he’s full-on smiling, showing all his crooked, coffee-stained teeth.
It’s the very first time I’ve ever seen him smile. In my whole life.
For a second, the gray lets him go. Like he’s slipped from its grasp when no one is looking and he can finally breathe again.
Can finally be free.
Just then the static stops and out of the speakers of the ham radio come beeps and ticks and tocks and clicks.
Just like inside the disk.
“This is it!” Mordecai Lord exclaims. “You hear that? I made contact with this frequency…and I’m translating the binary. It’s almost like Morse code, but not quite.” He grabs a tablet and turns to a fresh sheet. “Binary is a mathematical code of communication using just zeroes and ones. This is where I’m tracking the number sequences in these tablets.”
“Mr. Lord,” I say. “Do you have anything translated yet?”
“Only bits and pieces,” he says, scribbling down more numbers. “That came over yesterday.” He points to a loose sheet.
I pick it up and stare down at it.
“I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant…until now,” he says.
The Truth About Martians Page 17
