The Truth About Martians

by Melissa Savage

  So anyway…I want to thank you, God, for giving me Obie and letting him be my brother. And for letting Moon Shadow and J. Moon become a part of our family, too. But I have to ask you for your help with Dibs. He needs our help, God. I’m just not sure how to go about it.

  Mrs. Manuela’s voice rings through the nave.

  Amen.

  I cross myself, but this time the proper way with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the way we’re supposed to.

  I watch Mordecai Lord cross himself, too, and wonder what he prayed about today.

  And then it comes to me.

  The ending.

  The ending to the unfinished homemade comic book that’s been sitting in the top drawer between our beds.

  THE DEFEAT OF THE MARTIAN SUPERVIRUS

  Volume Sixteen of

  THE AFFINITO BROTHERS’ SUPERHERO DUO

  COMIC BOOK SERIES

  It’s an ending that isn’t really an ending at all.

  * * *

  I cup my hands and peer through the screen. There’s low church music playing on the radio somewhere inside and I hear crying.

  It’s Dibs.

  I know it is.

  I touch the door handle and it creaks when I pull on it.

  “Mylo!” Dibs whispers, peeking out from around the side of the house. “What are you doing?”

  The backyard is full of rusted-out machinery, old engines, and pieces of crumbling wood. I watch Dibs slip back down behind an old tractor and sections of broken-up fencing.

  “Dibs!” I hiss. “Where have you been? What are you doing back there?”

  His head pops back up again. He looks so small behind all that junk, like he’s drowning in all the brokenness. “Over here!” he calls in a whisper, waving his hand over his head.

  I find him barefoot in the dirt, his back leaned up against a pile of warped wood, with a stack of comic books and a fat lip with a cut across the center.

  “What are you doing out here?” I sit down next to him.

  He doesn’t even look up from his Planet Comics book. “He doesn’t want me in there today,” he tells me matter-of-factly, like I just asked him about the weather.

  “What do you mean? It’s your house.”

  “I’m not allowed back inside.” He shrugs, turning back to his comic book. “It happens sometimes. On the days I can’t do nothing right.”

  “Like what things?”

  He shrugs again without looking up from his comic. “Like every single solitary thing I do.”

  “Your lip looks real bad,” I tell him. “Maybe Momma should tend to it.”

  He turns a page and shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  I stare at him while my bones ache deep inside.

  Dibs shuts his comic book. “I’ve been thinking about Moon Shadow a lot,” he tells me. “I miss her already.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you can talk to her all you want with the headband she left for you, right?”

  I shrug. “I guess. But it’s not the same. I still miss her. Like trying to teach her to eat ice cream before I knew she didn’t eat ice cream.”

  “And teaching her to speak English from Superman comic books,” Dibs says.

  “She could even tell a better knock-knock joke than Spuds,” I say.

  Dibs laughs. “That’s not so hard to do.”

  “I guess not.”

  “So, have you learned anything new since she’s been gone? You know…new and important kinds of stuff.”

  I roll my eyes. “You mean, like the bathroom?”

  “Well? It’s important,” he insists.

  “I’m too embarrassed to ask her that. But I did learn one thing. She’s coming back.”

  He breathes in. “When?”

  I shrug. “Don’t know yet. But she promised me it would be real soon.”

  “Guess we can ask her about the whole bathroom thing then,” he says.

  “You can,” I tell him.

  I pick up a rock from the dirt and examine it while Dibs shakes his head real slow and blows air out his mouth. “Man alive,” he says. “You have an actual friend on Europa. It doesn’t get any neater than that.”

  “We do,” I correct him.

  “Yeah,” he says, smiling with his big beaver teeth at me. “We do.

  “Lots of them, actually,” I say.

  I can feel Dibs’s eyes on me while I dig out another rock from the ground. “They probably see you as some kind of hero, too, huh?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Nah,” I say.

  “I bet they do.”

  I take a deep breath. “So…you missed church today,” I tell him.

  He goes back to reading.

  I wipe sweat off my temple.

  “Where were you?” I ask.

  “He wouldn’t let me out of my room.”

  “He locked you in?”

  He turns the page without saying a word.

  “I heard crying in there just now,” I tell him. “I thought maybe it was you.”

  He shrugs again. “He does that sometimes,” he says without looking up. “He doesn’t know I know that, so don’t tell him.”

  “I won’t,” I promise.

  I pull a long weed from the dirt and start to rip it into tiny pieces.

  “Mordecai Lord was there today,” I say, pulling up another weed.

  Dibs smiles real big. “In church?” he asks. “Nah, you’re lying.”

  “In a suit and everything.” I smile.

  “Nuh-uh,” he says.

  “Yep.”

  “Brylcreem?”

  “So much he looked like he came in from the rain.” I laugh.

  Dibs does, too. “Attic bat breath?”

  “Nope,” I say. “He sat right next to me and all I smelled was Aqua Velva.”

  Dibs goes back to his book. “I would have liked to see that,” he says.

  “Here.” I pull the bear out from under the bib of my overalls. “He said to give it to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, it’s the bear from his son’s room, remember?”

  He takes it from my hand and gazes at it. “He didn’t really say it was for me, did he?”

  “Yep,” I say. “He said, ‘Give this to Dibs.’ ”

  “He said that?”

  “He said it just like that.”

  He gazes at the bear again, and then hugs it close to his chest. “That was real nice.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Did you eat today?”

  He doesn’t answer me.

  I hand him a flattened lemon square, wrapped in a paper napkin. An extra that I snuck when Mrs. Meadows was too busy cleaning her cat-eyed glasses during church cake-and-coffee fellowship to notice.

  “Oh, man, thanks.” Dibs grabs it from my hand and eats it in two bites, leaving a white powdered-sugar ring around his mouth.

  “Should have brought more,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” He smiles. “Thanks for that one.”

  “Well,” I tell him, standing up. “I better go.”

  “Thanks for saving me a lemon square…and the bear.”

  “Why don’t you just come on home with me now? Momma can make you a summer sausage sandwich with extra butter, just like you like it.”

  “Nah,” he says. “It’ll just make him madder. I’ve got to do what he says, and then he’ll cool down soon enough. He’s got another half a bottle to finish, and then I’ll run in and find something to eat.”

  My bones ache again. Sharp this time. Pulsing.

  “I brought you something else,” I say, pulling my homemade comic book out of my back pocket.

  He takes it. “You finally finished the endin
g?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “How’d you come up with it?”

  I can tell he’s already started reading because his lips move while he scans the word bubbles.

  “Let me know when you’re done with it,” I tell him, resting my back against an old engine. “The ending has to do with you.”

  His eyes meet mine. “Me?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “You put me in your book?”

  “Why are you so surprised?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I don’t feel important enough to be in any book.”

  “You’re important to me,” I tell him. “You’re like my brother.”

  He stares at me for a long time, powdered sugar still all around his mouth like a clown’s makeup and big round tears sitting on his lower lashes. “Really?”

  “Yep,” I tell him.

  “Like Obie?”

  I nod.

  Then I watch the big tears perched on his bottom lashes push their way down his face in two straight lines.

  July 14, 1947—9:10 a.m.

  I don’t tell Momma about the headband Moon Shadow gave me just in case she makes me wash my forehead to Z, too. It’s under my pillow next to Shortstop for safekeeping.

  Last night after lights out, all I could do was worry about Dibs. It’s been a few days now since we’ve been toes to nose, and truth be told, I miss his noxious feet in my face. I even pulled the headband over my head last night, hoping to get the answers I was looking for.

  But the headband stayed silent.

  I guess it’s an answer I need to find on my own.

  After chores the next morning, I find Momma out in the side-yard garden. She’s on her hands and knees in the dirt, weeding around the beet plants that she’ll pick for canning in the fall. She’s in her blue jeans and a button-down shirt, her hair tied back with a flowery scarf. I sit down on the ground and watch her. She’s singing. It’s the first time I’ve heard her do that since Obie got sick.

  I like hearing it.

  “Momma?”

  “Yes?” she asks without looking up.

  “My bones are hurting me,” I tell her.

  She sits back on her heels and blows an unruly clump of hair from her face.

  “Your bones?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Deep inside, they’re aching me.”

  “Come over here, let me feel your head.”

  “My bones don’t ache for me,” I say. “They ache for Dibs. And you know who else? For Mr. Butte. Even though sometimes I get real mad at him. My bones still ache for him, too.”

  “Ahh,” she sighs, standing up.

  She steps carefully over sprouting lettuce and Brussels sprouts and takes a seat next to me on the grass at the edge of the garden.

  “Why can’t we do more?” I ask her. “Mr. Butte hurts him and Dibs doesn’t deserve that, but he won’t leave because he has to run the ranch or his daddy will lose the whole thing and Dibs thinks it will be his fault. And he won’t leave because he thinks his momma is going to come back, when we all know she’s not. Someone needs to do something. And I think that someone should be us.”

  Momma is bobbing her head up and down like she’s thinking real hard about all I’m saying to her. When she thinks of exactly the right words to say, she stops bobbing.

  “You’re right,” she says.

  “I am?”

  “Yes. I’ve been lying up at nights wondering just what to do about it, too.”

  “Did you know that he didn’t eat nothing at all yesterday except the lemon square I brought for him from church? And you want to know what else? Mr. Butte made him stay outside in the hot sun all day.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she whispers.

  “He’s just plain awful,” I go on. “I don’t know why my bones would ever waste their time aching for a man like that.” I put my chin in my hand and pull blades of grass out of the ground one by one.

  “Mr. Butte isn’t an awful man,” Momma starts. “He’s just…broken is all. And he doesn’t know how to fix himself. That’s why you ache for him. Because of your heart.”

  I think about that.

  “Well, who does know how to fix him? Because he needs to be fixed quick. Dibs is skinny enough as it is. He needs to eat, Momma, you know that. That kid would eat ten times a day if you let him.”

  She smiles.

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  “I used to hate Mr. Butte,” I tell her, knowing full well that I owe the penny swear jar a whole dime for that one ’cause Momma thinks hate is the worst of all the swears. “For what he does to Dibs. But then there’s the whole aching bones thing. So I guess I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel about him. I’m all mixed up about it.”

  “Oh, honey, no one is all good or all bad. We all have some of both in us. We just have to remember to make the right choices even when they are harder to make than the wrong ones. And that’s real tough to do sometimes.”

  “You mean like his drinking?” I ask her.

  “That’s definitely one of them.” She nods.

  “Momma?” I say. “Do you ever feel like the gray is sucking you in? You know, after Obie died and all?”

  “The gray?”

  “Yeah, like a dark cloud that chases you. Like the one that caught up with Mr. Lord. And that’s what I think has Mr. Butte, too.”

  She takes a deep breath and blows the wisp of hair up in the air again while she considers her answer. “I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she says, then nods again. “Yes, I suppose it can feel like that sometimes.”

  “It’s dark,” I say.

  “It is,” she agrees.

  “And scary.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it got Mr. Lord.”

  “No,” she says. “Maybe for a time he let it in, but I think he’s finding his way out of it now.” She pats my knee. “And I think maybe you had something to do with that.”

  “It’s got Mr. Butte, though.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “We have to do something about that for Dibs,” I tell her. “You said it yourself, he’s our family.”

  She looks off in the direction of Butte Rise and Shine Pig and Poultry. “You really have a lot of courage, Mylo,” she says. “Do you know that?”

  I twist my neck to face her. “Me?” I point to myself.

  “Yes.”

  “I always thought it was Obie who was the brave one.”

  “He was,” Momma tells me. “But you are, too. You are so much like him.”

  I smile big. “I am?”

  “You don’t agree?”

  I think about it.

  “I didn’t,” I start. “But I’m beginning to find my courage part again. I think that maybe I’ve had it all along, but I just misplaced it for a time.”

  “Well, I’m glad you found it again,” she says.

  I pick more blades of grass while she swats at a fly buzzing around her head.

  “Momma?” I say. “Can we help Mr. Butte with his gray? I think he’s having trouble seeing his way out of it. And if he loses the farm, what will happen to Dibs and him? Where will they live?”

  “You have a good heart, Mylo,” she tells me. “It’s the very best part of you.”

  “What about the courage part? ’Cause you said courage earlier…remember? You said it.”

  She laughs and throws an arm around my shoulder. “Yes, definitely the courage part, too. Let’s talk to your daddy and see what we can do,” she says. “Maybe he has some ideas about how he can help with Mr. Funk at the bank. Maybe some others from church would be willing to pitch in as well.”

  I smile up at her. “Thanks, Momma.”

  “M
ylo?” she asks.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you get so smart?”

  “Well,” I say. “I know this sounds weird and all, but it kind of started with a box of Cracker Jacks, and that was only because Dibs’s tongue was tired of chocolate Neccos.”

  October 6, 1947—6:15 a.m.

  Jor-El McRoostershire the Third is belting out his morning wake-up song.

  Chickens cluck.

  Horses neigh.

  Clark Kent is barking from the front porch steps.

  A whole lot of nothing.

  Until there’s something.

  Something new to the Affinito Ranch morning ensemble. Well, not exactly new, but newer.

  And it starts with a word.

  Just one word.

  But this time, it’s not a whisper or a scream.

  It’s Dibson Tiberius Butte.

  “Mylo,” he whispers. “You up?”

  My eyes open when I hear it.

  He’s smiling at me with his big beaver teeth. But not at the end of my bed sleeping toes to nose. He’s snuggled up under the blue quilt that’s usually pulled straight and tight without any wrinkles in it. Except today the quilt’s not pulled straight or tight; it’s in a lump with Dibs underneath just the way Momma tucked him up under it last night.

  He’s holding a very special bear. Dibs named him Jupiter B. Bear. The B for Brooks.

  “Mylo?” he whispers again.

  I pull myself up and rub one knuckle over my eye.

  “This is your best one yet,” he says, holding up my latest comic book series:

  MOONTIANS AREN’T GREEN, AND THEY DON’T HARVEST YOUR BRAINS, EITHER

  Volume One of

  The Galactic Exploits of Mylo, Dibs & Gracie

  By Mylo Affinito and Graciela Maria Delgado

  “You think so?”

  “You bet I do. I can’t believe you put me in it.” He smiles even wider. “In the title and everything. And not even just a Jimmy Olsen. I’m a real live superhero. Just like you.”

  “And Gracie.”

  “Yeah, her too. I mean, like I’m really someone.”

  “What do you mean, someone?”