by Rex Bolt
He didn’t want to tell Mitch for now about Cathy’s latest conversation with Reggie Riley. He said, “You say that part of it, like they’re connected.”
“I believe they are. Some alien travelers observing and/or visiting the earth may indeed be we humans, from the future. At least that’s one theory.”
“Oh my God,” Pike said, but this was sounding eerily like something Mr. Gillmore mentioned too.
“Of course the theories abound,” Mitch said. “I’m sure you’ve been following the Hubble Telescope. We are consistently detecting earth-like planets now, and their guide stars which aren’t nearly as distant as we once believed.”
“Yeah, yeah … Just work on finding out about that filling, will you?”
Before Mitch could answer, Pike said, “I apologize … Stuff’s been going on … I wouldn’t want to bore you with it.”
“Understood completely,” Mitch said. “And no offense taken, and there never will be … I’ll catch you later son.”
Could that be the key to whole frigging thing? Mitch wondered. Some doofus in Texas who may be keeping a disgusting old metal filling wrapped in Kleenex in his top drawer?
***
The Curtis game went fine Saturday. It was on the road, 70 miles away, but a healthy amount of Hamilton students showed up. Curtis was stuck with a little guy trying to guard Amos Stillman, and Pike could have completed it there every single play, but there was a point where you don’t want to be a bunch of jerks and rub it in. Even so, Hamilton won by 26.
Pike was nervous about going out with Audrey that evening. It was a different feeling than he had on first-time dates in the past. He knew it had to do with the tragedy, that it was way too early for Audrey to be thinking clearly.
He was second-guessing himself. Not on account of the Jack Hannamaker thing, Pike was fine with that, stepping in for the guy who got what was coming to him. But was he taking advantage of Audrey in some way?
He rang the bell and her dad answered, Mr. Milburn, which was already a rough start. What could you say to him? Mr. Milburn was courteous, and Pike thinking he was amazingly composed considering the situation, and he sat Pike down in the living room while they waited for Audrey. Hailey stuck her head in for a moment and said hi.
Mr. Milburn asked Pike about school, and football, and how his parents were, just like a normal, pleasant father might do, who didn’t have a wife who got murdered two weeks ago.
Audrey soon appeared, dressed simply but looking great, Pike decided, and a burst of fragrance radiated off of her. They said goodbye to Mr. Milburn and as they were out the door he called after them to stay safe, which Pike knew made sense but still gave him a bit of the creeps.
They decided they were both hungry and Pike told her pick anywhere she’d like, though he hoped she’d go for a moderate place since he didn’t have all that much money on him. She suggested a taqueria, over on Edison Street, and he was down with that. One of his favorite restaurants, big portions and cheap.
They finished and were heading to the car, Pike not sure what was next, just let her call the shots, and Audrey said she wouldn’t mind taking a walk.
So they went down Edison to the end, where it teed into Oakwood, and they followed that a mile or so, an old-fashioned wide street, modest well-kept houses, until they came to the river.
“Dang,” Pike said. “It’s really flowing. I haven’t been down here in a bunch of years.”
Audrey said, “Yes, I’m so thankful for the rain last year. It was getting kind of dicey there, the drought.”
“Your dad’s a heck of nice man,” Pike said.
“Thank you, he really is.”
“It’s none of my business, but I can’t help thinking it … part of me honestly wishes he’d finished off Mr. Foxe.”
Chapter 26 Big Cake
Anthem, Arizona
October 23rd, 2016
Lucy Jastrow was riding her bicycle to the community center to meet her friend Gertrude and have Sunday brunch.
There were things she didn’t like about living in Anthem, but this was one of the perks. It was flat and relatively safe, in that there weren’t many cars to contend with. You could leave your house and pick one of three or four routes, depending how much exercise you were up for. Of course to Audrey the tract houses all looked the same, so whichever route you chose, it became confusing sometimes to navigate back in the end and find your own house.
This was one of the negatives, she supposed, how plastic it was here. Not much character, on the surface no real individuality, everything planned and organized and squeaky-clean. Right down to the manicuring of the the fake-grass putting green.
Lucy had moved here two years ago, from New Braunfels, Texas. Her son Matt convinced her. He lived in Phoenix, forty five minutes south of Anthem, which put the grandkids close, and that was a perk. The other part, she knew, was Matt, plus her daughter Faye who lived in New Jersey, didn’t completely trust her any more being so isolated out there in the Texas hill country.
Adding to why they were concerned about her, Lucy was convinced, was her fascination with UFO’s. It made them uneasy. She hadn’t dwelled much on the subject for decades, though the childhood incident with her dad was in her head, on some level, every day.
Then six years ago when Craig left her for another woman, named Stella, who was in fact at one time her best friend, Lucy had quite a bit of trouble sleeping, and frequently woke up in the middle of the night.
She discovered a talk show on AM radio, way down at the end of the dial, where they focused very little on politics and news of the day, and mostly on the strange and off-beat, which included unexplained phenomena in the skies.
In fact Lucy was tempted to call in a few times, when something the host or a guest said really hit home.
One subject that came up frequently was a claim that a UFO crashed in Roswell in the late 1940’s, a couple hundred miles from Hillsdale, where her grandpa lived and where she and her dad had their experience in 1956.
A Roswell crash didn’t make a lot of sense on the surface. First of all, if they were able to travel between stars, or maybe even galaxies, how unlikely would it be for something to happen, weatherwise or mechanically, when they reached Earth’s atmosphere, that would cause them to crash-land?
Except for the way it was handled. First you had newspaper articles telling the world a flying saucer had hit. Then the next day the army issues a statement that no, what crashed was a weather balloon.
Fine, newspapers make mistakes. But … if a simple weather balloon fell to earth, what was the army doing there at all then, sealing off the crash site?
Anyhow, these were the type of questions from the late-night radio program that got Lucy stimulated. So yes, she probably did talk about UFO’s to whoever would listen. After all, she didn’t have that much going on otherwise. But Matt and Faye didn’t like this, they called it in an obsession, and Lucy suspected they feared she was turning paranoid and irrational.
So she gave in, and here she was in Palm Breeze Manor in Anthem, Arizona. Your HOA fees got you three giant pools, golf if you wanted it, plus tennis and pickleball, a rec center with about a thousand exercise machines, and classes and outings and planned activities up the wazoo.
Lucy didn’t partake in much of it. She liked to ride her bike and take walks, and observe people without committing to anything. One good thing was she liked the heat. Even the summers didn’t particularly bother her.
Today was pretty typical fall weather. High of 86, just a few thin wisps of clouds to the west. And dry, that was for sure.
She parked her bicycle and headed inside the community center. They had three restaurants—a traditional bacon and eggs griddle, an Asian place that ran the gamut from sushi to Panda Express-type Chinese noodles to Vietnamese soup, which was all tasty though Lucy doubted it was very authentic, and a seafood restaurant.
Which is where she was meeting Gertrude, The Sandpiper
.
Except that when Lucy gave her name to the hostess, they walked her way back to the rear, and then into a banquet room, where about a million people burst out with ‘Happy Birthday!’, and little blow horns sounded and there was confetti and then people started singing to her, and Lucy found herself thoroughly embarrassed by the whole thing.
“Well Happy 65th Mom,” Faye said, planting a kiss on her cheek. Lucy’s official birthday wasn’t until Wednesday, but either way a simple lunch with Gertrude would have done the trick.
But she put on a happy face, tried to circulate around the room greeting everyone, spent as much time as she could with the grandchildren, especially Faye’s kids who made the trip from New Jersey.
There was a big cake with three layers and there were some toasts. The whole affair ran about three hours, and Lucy was exhausted when it finally wound down and people said their final goodbye’s and trickled out.
When it was over it was just her and Gertrude, the way it was supposed to work in the beginning. Getrude suggested coffee, and there was a kiosk that brewed it fresh, and they took their coffees outside and stretched out in lounge chairs by one of the pools.
Gertrude had become a good friend. She was from Wisconsin, had been been here only a year, but Lucy felt close enough to her where she almost wanted to tell her her secret, the one she shared with her dad, which as she thought about it was 60 years old now.
But she didn’t. She’d always remained true to their agreement from back then, that early evening in the dusty town with no one around. Her dad in his calm voice telling her it was real, but that it wasn’t. And that it would always be their secret, no one else’s.
The main reason she didn’t like birthdays was they made her miss her dad. Her mother was cold, her relationship with Lucy had been thin at best, but her dad was her world.
When Lucy was nine, her dad robbed a bank. In Oklahoma City. He was caught three days later in Arkansas. There had obviously been plenty of stuff behind the scenes in his life that he’d shielded her from. Now he was going away, the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute Indiana. For twelve years.
Her dad might have been paroled in nine, but he never made it that far. He died in prison in 1965 from what Lucy always thought was a broken heart.
She had one too, that she carried around with her, that shaped her life.
So birthdays were hard. Lucy and Gertrude watched the swimmers and families frolicking around the pool on this late Sunday, they talked a little movies and TV and books, and then it was time to go, and Lucy got her bicycle and pedaled back home.
Chapter 27 Flight Plan
Pike had never been on a plane, so in that regard this was exciting. Which Pike figured was unusual when you’re 18-years-old, to have never experienced flying. But his dad had loved to drive, to be in control, and all their family trips growing up were in the car.
Including, of course, the one this past June to the southwest.
You were pretty cramped in the plane, that was for sure. The second leg, San Diego to Salt Lake, they switched to a larger one, so not as bad. Pike was surprised the security seemed pretty light, no long lines or major searches like you’d heard about. He got to Salt Lake City on time, was impressed how clean the airport was and wondered if the Mormons had something to do with that, though he didn’t know much about the religion and decided he shouldn’t be assuming anything.
What they had him do, Utah State, or specifically Jake Olsen, the grad assistant who was the one he’d been dealing with, was jump on a shuttle bus at the airport and get off in the center of Logan, an hour and a half away, and then to let them know they made it.
Pike started to feel a bit like he was in the middle of a cattle call, especially when he started talking to the guy across the aisle from him on the bus and it turned out the guy was going the same place, and was also being recruited. Before the bus ride was over, two more dudes spoke up who were in the same situation.
The guy across from him was a pretty nice kid, guy named Tanner Hayes from Dallas. Another quarterback, Pike learned pretty quick, so whoopee. All the lines Jake Olsen had been feeding him on the phone about what a great fit this would be for Pike, and how he has the unique skillset they’re looking for. Yeah, right.
Pike digested it and figured he may as well go with the flow, that you’re out here, which means you’re not in school, so never a bad thing. Except he’d heard Hannamker was getting out of the hospital tomorrow, so there were some second thoughts about being out of town when that unfolded. But what could you do?
Olsen picked them up in a team van and checked them into the dorms. Pike was surprised how they handled it, they’d booted some of the freshman players out of their dorm rooms for the weekend, had them triple or quadruple up somewhere else, and gave the rooms to the high school recruits. Pike ended up with Hayes, the QB from the bus.
Then they went to a team practice. It wasn’t in the stadium, it was on a side field, but the layout was impressive. And you had the mountains right there, snowcaps. Practice was light, with no contact, because this was Thursday and there was a game Saturday. Pike saw there were four quarterbacks in action on the field, and what looked like a couple more of them redshirting, standing nearby, so it would be quite a logjam to get any playing time out here if he did come, and of course if they did really want him in the end.
Then there was a team dinner, which they called training table, everyone together in a dedicated cafeteria across from the workout facility, which was only open to varsity athletes and off-limits to the general student population. After dinner one of the assistant coaches got up and announced how pleased they were to have the recruits in this weekend for the Wyoming game, and he had them all stand. Pike wasn’t surprised by any of it the any more, and there were probably forty guys total there like him, at least.
After dinner they split up the recruits by offense and defense, plus lumped all the lineman together, and they took them to one of the halls and put them in classrooms.
An assistant coach was in charge of Pike’s group and first he gave a lengthy overview of the program, the expectations of student athletes, how the standard of play was on the rise, and the related BS. Then he ran the second part like a real chalk-talk session, diagramming all this junk on the board, with multiple squirly lines and arrows that Pike didn’t feel like paying attention to. The head coach popped in for five minutes in the middle and gave a rehearsed speech.
It dragged on, and they didn’t get out of there until close to 9. Pike and Hayes went downtown to see what that was all about. It was clearly a mostly Mormon community, a big LDS temple right in the center of things and only a few bars that they could see.
A Thursday night, very few students downtown it seemed, which Hayes said was very different than most college towns. He told Pike he’d done a recruiting trip to Colorado State and it was way different, Thursday night being the fun night on campus and everyone knew it.
One of the bars was the diviest of the two or three in town, and they could see a pool table in back, and Hayes asked Pike if he had a fake ID. Pike did have one, though he only risked using it once, last summer when he was up in San Jose with his friend Mac.
He weighed everything. If he got caught, and reported, that might be it for any shot at Utah State. The flip side, he could pass for 21, at least people told him that. The main reason was he had a thick five o’clock shadow. He’d shave in the morning and then by that night at least a portion of it had filled back in pretty strong.
Hayes himself looked older, and who knows he might have even been 19 going on twenty, maybe he got held back in third grade or whatever. Pike decided to go for it, and they walked right in, with the bouncer just giving them a cursory check and asking how they were doing tonight.
Hayes put back a couple beers pretty quick and it turned out he wasn’t a good drinker, and was getting into it a bit with two guys using the pool table who were taking too long to finish.
> “Nice shot,” Hayes said to the two of them, “if you’re trying to avoid landing it in the pocket.” He let out a laugh.
Pike didn’t have a good feeling about where this was going … He didn’t know a darn thing about this Tanner Hayes kid, other than he seemed like a nice enough guy to shoot the breeze with on a bus ride. But someone was going to fight someone here, probably sooner rather than later.
The two guys playing pool started answering back, good natured but sticking in the needle, and Hayes would try to top them. Pike noticed he was amping up the Texas good-old-boy accent as it developed.
The two guys finally finished their game and one of the them came over to Hayes, who was sitting on a high stool, and the guy smiled and told him the table was all his, and as he handed him his cue stick he fired a short left hand that landed flush on Hayes’s right eye.
Hayes fell off the stool and tried to scramble to his feet. The other guy had moved in now, and the look on his face told you he wasn’t planning to hand over his cue stick, he was planning to use it on Hayes.
It occurred to Pike, in the instant before he made his move, that these guys may have been farmers, but they knew their way around in a bar fight.
Pike popped up and intercepted the second guy, wrapping him in bear hug. He heard some crackling out of the guy’s back, and the guy yelled out and Pike let him go, and he dropped the cue stick and he doubled over.
Hayes was on the first guy now, he’d tackled him and they were rolling around on the floor going at it when the bouncer pulled him off. Another bouncer showed up as well, and they grabbed the two of them, Pike and Hayes, by the throats and marched them out into the street and told them don’t come back.
Obviously the same rules didn’t apply to the two local pool table dudes, which was no surprise. Though the one guy who Pike bear hugged probably had other things to worry about now.
Despite getting clocked, Hayes was kind of giddy and tried to high-five Pike, though he was staggering a little and missed. “Buddy,” he said, “that was some quick thinking in there … by you … Y’all saved my ass, I ain’t ashamed to admit it!”
