The Truth About Martians

by Melissa Savage

  I reach down and touch it. It’s metal and sharp on the edge. I pull on it and the piece slips out from under the mattress. An I beam from the wreckage. A thin strip of metal with the same purple symbols on it as Moon Shadow has down her sleeve.

  I pull up the mattress.

  “Hey!” I yell down to Daddy and Dibs. “I found something.”

  “Attic bats?”

  “No.”

  “Pickax?”

  “Just get up here already,” I holler.

  I hear Dibs’s bare feet slapping against the wood steps behind me and then Daddy’s boots, and soon Dibs’s hot breath is over my shoulder.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Look.” I point under the bed.

  “The Boogieman?” He belly-flops to the floor and gazes under the bed.

  “No, just look.” I hold up the mattress for Dibs to see.

  The mattress has been hollowed out and filled with pieces from the crash site. All the broken-up parts are held in by long crusty strips of masking tape across the bottom of the mattress.

  He whistles. “Mr. Lord struck the mother lode!” he says, grabbing a piece from the stash.

  “That’s why he’s a two-star,” Dibs tells me. “Two-stars know how to hide pieces of a Martian ship when they need to.” He examines the strip of metal in his hand. “Guess he was out there, too,” he says. “You think he saw the Moontians? Bet he wasn’t brave enough to go inside, though. He may be a two-star, but he isn’t a universe-appointed superhero like you. He probably doesn’t eat Cracker Jacks.”

  “I don’t know, but look at that.” I point. “There are all his tablets, too.” I army-crawl through the dust, scooching farther to reach the tablets. I drag out a pile of the 1943 ones and a pile of the 1942 ones, too. All with the ones and the zeroes in them.

  “What did you find?” Daddy is kneeling behind us now.

  I hand the tablets to him and he takes them, piling them all together on the night table. Then he stops. He picks up the picture of Mr. Lord and his boy and stares down at it.

  “Here’s the last of them, Daddy,” I tell him, handing him the final piles of tablets.

  He sets the frame down and starts to thumb through the filled pages.

  “Are any of them decoded, Mr. Affinito?” Dibs asks.

  “Some,” Daddy says. “I’ll take these back with me and decode the rest.”

  I stare at him. “How do you know how to do that?” I ask.

  His eyes meet mine but he doesn’t say anything. And I wonder just how much there is to know about Daddy that I never knew before.

  “Geez, Mr. Affinito,” Dibs says. “You’re just like the Clock. He’s this highfalutin crime-stopper who looks like a regular guy in a three-piece suit, but he wears a mask to hide his identity when he’s solving mysteries and fighting injustice. All the other highfalutins don’t have a clue it’s him. You don’t have a calling card with a clock on it by chance, do you?” Dibs gives me an elbow.

  Daddy gathers all the tablets in his arms and turns to Dibs. “Not with me.” He smiles big, making his way out the door.

  July 10, 1947—10:05 a.m.

  All us kids meet up at Corona General Thursday morning.

  Everyone is in.

  Even Diego, and especially Spuds, whose biggest goal now is to teach Moon Shadow how to tell a joke right.

  Dibs and I make it to the store first. Mrs. Manuela is already at the counter, sharing her daily news updates.

  “Mrs. Manuela,” Mrs. Delgado is saying, “they already said it was all just one big mistake. It was a weather balloon. Didn’t you see the paper?”

  “Oh, I saw it, all right.” Mrs. Manuela smiles smugly.

  Gracie is on her stool in rolled-up blue jeans and a pink T-shirt, winding her hair and still reading from the same book she had with her before, Comet in Moominland.

  I make a mental note to ask Mrs. Bishop about that one on my next trip to the Roswell Library.

  “Hi, Gracie.” I wave.

  Her eyes meet mine, and she smiles.

  “You boys hear that Mac Brazel is back home?” Mrs. Manuela asks.

  “He is?” Dibs says. “They let him go?”

  “That’s right, with a shiny brand-new pickup, too.”

  Dibs and I look at each other.

  “Before the crash in the desert,” Mrs. Manuela goes on, “the Army Air Force had a reward for anyone finding evidence of a real live flying saucer. Three thousand dollars.”

  “Three…thousand…dollars?” Dibs repeats each word real slow.

  “I’m not saying it’s true.” Mrs. Manuela fans herself with an embroidered hanky. “But sure seems to me Mac Brazel got that money to keep his mouth shut.”

  Dibs leans in close to me. “I would have kept mine shut for a whole lot less,” he says. “We only owe Mr. Funk two hundred.”

  “Did you hear about Mr. Lord?” I ask Mrs. Manuela. “Did they let him go, too?”

  “Mordecai Lord?” Mrs. Manuela says. “Oh, that poor, dear man. Tsk tsk tsk.” She clicks her tongue. “So much tragedy in his life. Losing both his wife and his son like that? He just gave up, the poor man.”

  “Did he really kill them?” Dibs asks.

  “What? Of course not! Where did you hear something like that?” Mrs. Manuela holds her hand to her chest.

  “I—I…Diego told me. I mean, um…the others said that—” Dibs starts.

  “They were hit by a drunk driver out here on Highway Fifty-Four,” she says.

  I hear a swallow croak down Dibs’s skinny neck.

  “Such a tragedy,” she goes on. “Killed instantly. He was devastated…just devastated. Well, we all were, of course. Mrs. Lord was part of our Roswell Women’s Club, which organized the library in Roswell. And she played a mean game of pinochle, too.” She smiles, looking off in the distance as she watches her memories.

  I see Momma doing that sometimes. Staring and smiling, and I know she’s watching her memories of Obie.

  “They took him, Mrs. Manuela,” Dibs tells her. “They took Mr. Lord and busted up his house something awful.”

  She nods.

  She already knows.

  “He was a two-star general on his way to becoming a four-star until they let him go all those years ago. It’s none of my concern, mind you.”

  “Do they still have him or did they bring him home, too?” I ask again.

  “Well.” She leans in close to me. “I heard from Maryanne Lennon that Lorraine and Joe Taylor saw them dropping him off this morning. Still in his bathrobe. Tsk tsk tsk, the poor man.”

  I let out all the air I was holding inside me and look over at Dibs.

  Mr. Lord is home.

  “You know if there’s any more of that reward money to be had?” Dibs asks her.

  “I didn’t say Mac Brazel got any reward money.” Mrs. Manuela fans her hanky. “I’m just saying a brand-new truck for a ranch hand in these hard times is very curious, is all. Very, very curious.”

  “Mrs. Manuela,” Mrs. Delgado says. “It’s all nonsense. Pure nonsense. It’s all been cleared up. It was in the newspaper. It was a weather balloon.”

  “Oh, yes, I read the paper. But if it was just another one of their weather balloons, why are they running around Corona taking men in the middle of the night and searching homes for the pieces?”

  “The Army Air Force is…well, they’re thorough, is all,” Mrs. Delgado says.

  “Oh, they’re thorough, all right.” Mrs. Manuela snorts. “A seven-truck convoy went through the center of town to haul away torn-up pieces of tinfoil and balsa wood? Jake Rooney said that when one of the flatbeds hit a pothole out front here, the tarp flew up just enough that he could see something in there, and I’ll tell you this…it wasn’t any weather balloon. But that’s all I�
��m saying about it. You can ask him yourself.”

  “Mrs. Manuela,” Gracie says softly. “Did they find anything…alive out there?” Gracie’s eyes meet mine.

  “Graciela Maria!” Mrs. Delgado exclaims. “What a question!”

  “All I know,” Mrs. Manuela says, “is that they called up the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, looking for caskets. Four of them, to be exact.” She holds up four fingers. “But before Mac Brazel stopped talking, he said there were five of them. But I’m not saying anything. Not one single thing about it. It’s just curious, is all.”

  * * *

  We all meet out behind the store.

  Me, Dibs, Gracie, Diego, and Spuds.

  Gracie comes prepared, removing her notebook from her cloth purse and laying it flat on top of the trash bin. On two full pages is a hand-drawn map of the 509th Bomb Group base in Roswell, and at the top it reads:

  MOONTIAN RESCUE AND RETURN MISSION

  “This is a map of the entire installation,” Gracie tells us.

  The rest of us stand in a circle around her, studying the drawing.

  “How do you know all this—” Dibs starts.

  “I told you, sometimes I go with Daddy on the weekends,” she says. “I’ve been playing at the base since before I could walk. There are only a few special places that hold secrets—the places I wasn’t allowed to see, but I know exactly which spots those are. I figure one of them must be where they’re keeping J. Moon.”

  “J. Moon?” I ask.

  “Oh, yeah.” She looks up. “I named him J. Moon after Jupiter’s Moon. Good, right?”

  I smile. “Yeah,” I tell her. “Real good.”

  “See here?” She points to a large square drawing labeled HANGAR 18. “This is Hangar Eighteen. I’m not allowed anywhere near there. I’m thinking this is where they brought the ship. The paper said the ship is being sent to Wright Field. So we have to hurry.”

  “How can you be so sure it’s in Hangar Eighteen?” Diego asks. “Just because you aren’t allowed in there?”

  She looks up at him. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s where they’ve brought the ones before this.”

  No one says anything while we take it all in.

  “Before?” I whisper.

  She nods. “This may be the first time something crashed in Corona, but not in New Mexico,” she says. “And certainly not on Earth. It’s been happening for a long time. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone that, so you all need to keep your mouths shut about it.” She points to each one of us. “Promise?”

  “How do you know that?” I ask her.

  “I’ve seen papers I’m not supposed to see,” she says. “And believe me, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. But you all have to promise you won’t tell another solitary soul what I’ve told you.” She points again.

  We all nod.

  “Now, see this?” She points to a large square with a big red cross on it. “This is the base infirmary. That’s where I think they would have brought him. And…the other bodies. The whole thing isn’t off-limits, but there is a special hallway with a locked door and a sign that says ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ ”

  “What’s in there?” Spuds asks.

  Gracie shrugs. “It’s need-to-know,” she says, flipping over the paper to show us a map of the interior hallways of the infirmary on the reverse side. “Here is the hospital. There are regular rooms”—she points to small squares in a line—“examining rooms, and offices, too. Here is Major Williams’s office and Lieutenant Bosco’s and Major Lewis’s. Here is where the secretary sits, Miss Tawney. And here…here is the hall that is off-limits.”

  “But how will we get into a hallway if we aren’t need-to-know?” Diego asks.

  “That’s the question,” she says. “Each door has a code on it instead of a regular key.”

  “A code?”

  “Yeah, there’s this panel on the wall next to the door with numbers on it and you have to type in the correct code or the handle won’t turn, get it?”

  “A lock with no key?” I ask her.

  “Yep,” she says.

  “So how do we get the codes?” Diego asks.

  She sighs. “That’s where I’m stuck,” she says. “I don’t know the codes. You need top security clearance for that.”

  “Who has top security clearance?” I ask her.

  “Anyone with a need to know,” she says. “Brigadiers and up.”

  “What does that mean?” Dibs asks.

  “The generals,” she says. “One star is brigadier, two stars is major, three stars is lieutenant, and four stars is the top. That’s a full general. There’s a five-star one, too, but that’s pretty rare.”

  Dibs sticks his chin in the air and puts his hands on his hips.

  “Tune in tomorrow,” Dibs says in his radio announcer voice, “same time, same station, for the conclusion of the adventures of Mylo Affinito and his trusty sidekick, the Mighty Dibson Tiberius Butte, as they send the Moontians back home to Jupiter’s Moon, Europa!” He points a skinny finger to the sky.

  Diego laughs this time, rolling his eyes. “Butte,” he says.

  “What?” I can see Dibs fold his tiny dukes at his side, waiting for Diego’s dig.

  Instead, Diego jumps into his own superhero pose, his hands on his waist and his chin pointed to the sky. “You forgot Diego the Great.”

  Dibs laughs.

  “And me too,” Spuds pipes up. “I want a superhero name, too.”

  “The Mighty Potato?” Diego says.

  Spuds poses. “I prefer the Mighty Jokester,” he announces. “Funnier than a speeding knock-knock joke, more hilarious than a sidesplitting comedy radio program, able to get a laugh with every joke he tells.”

  Diego elbows Dibs. “We think the potato one fits better.” He smiles down at him. “Right?”

  Dibs nods real big and smiles, too.

  * * *

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  My fist hits the door.

  “Mr. Lord,” I call through the ripped screen. “Mr. Lord!”

  The smell of strong coffee fills my nose while heavy footsteps pound the floorboards inside, until he’s standing in front of us with his coffee mug in his hand.

  “Don’t you boys get it yet?” he says. “I’m trying to protect—”

  He stops.

  The screen door opens and he stands there staring down at us.

  Dibs and me.

  And her too.

  Moon Shadow, back in her tan flight suit with the purple symbols down the sleeve and her gold headband secure around her watermelon head.

  Ready for her journey home.

  “Mr. Lord,” I say. “I’d like you to meet our friend…Moon Shadow.”

  “H-hello,” Moon Shadow says, peering up at him with her large black eyes.

  “We need you,” I tell him. “She needs to get her brother back to Europa. You know that he’s sick and they’re planning the transfer tomorrow. It needs to happen now, Mr. Lord. Will you help us do that?”

  He doesn’t say a single word.

  Not one single word for a real long time while he takes her in.

  When he finally opens his mouth, nothing comes out. Like maybe his tongue forgot what it wanted to say. He just stands there, not blinking or breathing or speaking or anything.

  “Sir?” I say after a good long while.

  I watch as he slowly kneels down in front of us, until he is eye to eye with Moon Shadow.

  “Hello,” he says to her, the corners of his mouth turning up. “It’s so nice to meet you.” He holds out his hand to shake hers.

  I raise my eyebrows at Dibs. “He’s in.”

  July 10, 1947—11:30 p.m.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” I whisper to Dibs while he waves me i
n through his screen door.

  “Will you shut up?” Dibs hisses with one finger over his lips. “My dad’s going to wake up. If I don’t take them and I’m not here to stop him, he might drive somewhere when he shouldn’t be driving nowhere. He finished the whole bottle and started another right after supper. With all that in him he probably won’t even be up to slop the pigs in the morning, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Isn’t he going to be mad?”

  Dibs shrugs. “Won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last.”

  “Still,” I say. “Be careful.”

  He nods and points to the davenport in the living room. “He’s sleeping on the couch,” he mouths.

  Together we creep through the messy kitchen with dishes stacked high in the sink, on the counters, and on the tables, too. There are flies swirling around on the hunt for old and smelly food morsels. The floor feels tacky under my boots and the whole place stinks like food gone bad and like maybe a pig or two slipped in when no one was looking.

  Dibs’s daddy is sprawled out on the couch in nothing but his dirty undershirt and even dirtier Fruit of the Looms, his clothes in a heap on the floor next to him. Mr. Butte snorts a loud snore and then burps up something that smells like bad burrito. Dibs grabs his daddy’s overalls off the floor, pulls out two keys on a key chain, and turns around to face me.

  “Mission accomplished,” he whispers.

  Another loud snort and we both jump and Dibs almost drops the keys.

  “Come on,” I whisper back.

  “Wait.” Dibs hands me the keys and grabs a crocheted afghan from the chair and carefully places it across Mr. Butte. “Okay,” he says. “Now I’m ready.”

  Dibs and I run as fast as we can down his dirt drive, past the black mailbox to Mr. Lord’s pickup. I give Dibs ten fingers to help him into the back along with Moon Shadow and then climb up the bumper myself. Up front is Mr. Lord in the driver’s seat in his class A uniform with two stars on each epaulet. Daddy’s on the passenger side in his class A with his ribbons on the front.

  * * *