by Ben Adams
“She starts by taking out her false teeth.”
“Professor Gentry,” the sheriff interrupted, sounding official, “Mrs. Morris told us you were the man to talk to about Elvis.”
“Well, it depends on what you want to know. You want the propaganda, the endless lies fed to you since birth? Or would you rather hear the truth, the truth they don’t want you to know?”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Sheriff Masters asked.
“The government, of course,” Professor Gentry said, pounding his fist on the kitchen table. “They’ve been trying to silence me for years. Why do you think I moved all the way out here? To keep them out, to keep them from spying on me.”
John had run into Professor Gentry’s type before. Whether they were passing out flyers on his college campus, at the farmers market trying to get signatures for unnecessary legislation, or feeding pigeons in the park while wearing a tinfoil hat, they always believed that there was a mammoth conspiracy moving and shaping society, machinations that only they could see, and that it was their duty to educate and recruit everyone they met to their cause. At first, John humored them, listening, nodding, pointing out obvious holes in their logic, but he got tired of hearing comments like, ‘but don’t you see’, or, ‘you just don’t get it’, or, ‘you’re all sheeple’. Now when he encountered someone with an irrational conspiracy theory, he either ignored them or walked away. To John, all Professor Gentry needed was a tinfoil hat.
“Now,” Professor Gentry said, leaning back and folding his hands across his stomach, covering the image on his t-shirt of Kennedy Space Center floating through the Milky Way, “why don’t you tell me what this is about?”
“Mrs. Morris took a picture of a man she believed was Elvis. I was hired to come down here, investigate it. Turns out he was just an Elvis impersonator. Said he was leaving town, didn’t want any trouble. Apparently, he was murdered before he could leave.”
“Murdered?” Professor Gentry leaned forward, his hands on each side of the table, anchoring himself like his curiosity defied gravity.
“I’m not surprised. It’s not the first time they’ve killed to cover up the truth.”
“That’s not the strange part,” Sheriff Masters said. “When we got to his place, it was crawling with government types, Air Force, NASA. What does NASA have to do with Leadbelly or Elvis?”
“Unbelievable.” Professor Gentry shook his head, and slapped the table with both palms. “You two have stumbled onto the biggest conspiracy in modern times and you don’t even know it. Let me tell you something. There are scientists out there who correctly believe we’re not alone in the universe. They’ve spent careers searching the cosmos for intelligent life. Then, there are those who believe intelligent life has been searching for us. What’s more, they’re all part of a clandestine branch of the Air Force, a very secretive unit, whose sole mission is to study alien life both in the skies and here on Earth. They’re trying to keep the existence of extraterrestrial life a secret, while at the same time attempting to weaponize their findings.”
“And how do you know all this, Professor?” the sheriff asked.
“I was Elvis’s dog walker. He’d go out with me when I’d walk Brutus, Snoopy, Baba, Sherlock. I walked all of them. He told me everything about the government and UFOs. He even showed me some of his journals, the field reports he filed for the Air Force.”
“He trusted you with all that?”
“People trust their dog walker more than their babysitter. But Elvis, he was one of them, a government agent. In 1960, after he was discharged by the Army, Elvis was recruited by an Air Force officer named Major Hollister.”
“He’s a colonel now,” John said. “He was at Leadbelly’s trailer today.”
“I walked his dog when he came to Graceland, a piece of shit toy poodle named Astro. Can you believe that? He’s looking for little green men and he names his dog Astro. What a dick. Anyway, he recruited Elvis into the Air Force, personally overseeing his training, turning him into an ‘intergalactic covert operative’, that’s what Elvis called it. Colonel Hollister, he said Elvis was his greatest achievement. Let me show you something.”
Professor Gentry scooted out from behind the table. He waddled through the kitchen, past the tan cabinets that were coated in plastic mimicking wood, and toward the bedroom. At the bedroom’s accordion door, he peeked over his shoulder at John and Sheriff Masters like they were going to steal his locker combination, and cracked the door partly, creating just enough space for him to squeeze through, then closed it behind him. There was shuffling behind the door. He returned from the bedroom, flipping through the pages of a folder. Professor Gentry pulled out a piece of paper and slapped it on the table. A series of numbers was written on it. Several letters were circled and ‘Wow!’ was written next to them.
“Looks like a number puzzle,” John said, remembering his unfinished puzzle in his hotel room, regretting not working on it.
“In a way, it is,” Professor Gentry said. “Every minute of every day, we send radio waves into space. SETI, you know what SETI is, right? They assume someone out there’s doing the same. So SETI listens for radio waves, or, more precisely, their interns and PhD candidates do. For years they listened, hoping to hear something. Mostly what they heard was static, white noise, patterns like these.” He moved his hand over the page, gesturing at the patterns of ones, twos, and threes. “But, on August 15, 1977, they heard this.” He pointed to a group of letters circled in red ink. Next to the letters, one word had been written that accurately summarized the astrophysicists’ sentiment toward this find: ‘Wow!’
“This signal made everyone at SETI lose their shit.”
“Is that the technical term?” John asked.
“They’d been trying to talk to the stars for years. And now, someone was talking back. The SETI guys did their math thing and determined the signal was sent two hundred years ago from a star in the constellation Sagittarius. Now, this is the part of the story that changed my life. The very next day, August 16, 1977, Elvis Aaron Presley died.”
“Think about it. Someone up there,” Professor Gentry said, pointing toward his popcorn ceiling, “talked to someone down here, and the very next day Elvis died. This isn’t a coincidence. And I’m not the only one who thinks that it isn’t.”
“In your book, you say Elvis faked his death,” John said, repeating Mrs. Morris’s comment. He hadn’t read Professor Gentry’s book. He’d been reading something else.
“His fans weren’t going to buy a book saying Elvis was dead,” Professor Gentry said, shrugging his shoulders like suggesting Elvis was still alive was a sound marketing strategy. “One thing I learned from Elvis, you have to know your audience.”
John shook his head. Professor Gentry was no better than The National Enquirer, using folklore to sell copy.
“After Elvis’s death, Colonel Hollister became obsessed, paranoid. This was all anyone was talking about at Graceland at the time. No one there can keep a secret. Like me, Colonel Hollister figured both Elvis’s death and the Wow! Signal were related, but he took it one step further. He believed both events were part of an alien invasion plot of the United States, that they intended to cripple our psyche by eliminating cultural icons, starting with Elvis Presley.”
“Alright,” the sheriff said, “what’s all this gotta do with Leadbelly getting murdered?”
“For years Elvis collected data on alien activity. During our last walk, he told me he was worried an alien contingent had learned he was spying on them. Colonel Hollister had Elvis’s manager increase the amount and function of his body doubles. Everyone thought the doubles were due to Elvis’s increased drug use. That’s what they wanted everyone to think, but it really had to do with the danger he was in.”
“Elvis told you everything about his investigation, about aliens?” John asked. He had been holding the journal on his lap since they sat down and John brushed his thumb along the pages’ ratted and tattered edges.
“Yup.”
“Did he tell you about this?” John set his great-great-great-grandfather Archibald’s journal on the table, delicately slid it to the middle. He only showed them the book, not the pictures. He left them under his seat in the car.
“You’re kidding me.” Professor Gentry held the book, caressed its cover. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in Leadbelly’s trailer.”
“I guess this is that moment where you tell me what the hell that thing is,” Sheriff Masters said, looking over at John.
“The journal of Archibald Abernathy,” Professor Gentry said. “I thought it was a myth.”
“What the hell does a diary gotta do with Leadbelly?”
“Not Leadbelly,” John said. “Me. Archibald Abernathy’s my great-great-great-grandfather.”
“You know your great-great-great-grandfather’s name?” the sheriff asked.
“School project.”
“This journal is the key to understanding the alien invasion,” Professor Gentry said. “Have you read any of it?”
“Parts,” John said. He told them what he’d read so far, Abraham Lincoln, Archibald, Louisa, the extraterrestrials, Las Vegas. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about it earlier, Sheriff. I didn’t know what to make of it, how everything fit together.”
“And what do you think about you being part alien and all?” the sheriff asked.
“It’s just a piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything.” The connections existed, but they weren’t fastened together, unable to convince John that he was anything more than a puzzle maker.
“The journal,” Professor Gentry said, standing and pacing the linoleum, “Elvis told me all about it when we’d walk his chimp, Scatter. Walking dogs is one thing, but a diaper-wearing chimp…That journal, he’d talk about it like it was the Holy Grail or the Rosetta Stone, something that would help them find an edge in their battle against the extraterrestrials. I never thought I’d live to see it.”
“When we showed up, that’s how you knew my name.” John realized it was also how Colonel Hollister knew his name.
“The Abernathy name is infamous in some circles. All because of this journal.” Professor Gentry jabbed his finger at the journal before turning and continuing his circuit. “Archibald Abernathy regularly sent copies of his entries to the War Department like President Lincoln asked, but after a while, he just stopped sending them. Your great-great-great-grandfather kept really detailed journals, so it was always assumed he continued chronicling his life. President Roosevelt, not FDR, the other one, Theodore, he issued an executive order authorizing the secret service to seize it, but Archibald’s house burned down the day of his funeral. Everyone thought the journal was lost in the fire.”
“The land where the house was, it’s a Party Store,” John said. Everything Professor Gentry said contradicted what John had learned about his family history, how the Abernathys migrated to Denver looking for a new life, how Archibald’s fate became a parable for making sure the stove was turned off, not wanting to lose the family fortune in a fire. Although the present-day Abernathy fortune consisted of student loan debt, late rent, and credit card bills.
“When I was in Leadbelly’s trailer, I saw a bunch of photos on the wall. For Los Alamos and Area 51. Surveillance photos.” John left out the pictures of him as a kid.
“He must have somehow become aware of Elvis’s connection to the government and was secretly investigating.”
“Maybe he read your book,” John said.
“And he discovered something he shouldn’t have, probably the journal, and was assassinated for it, but where did he find it?”
“Wait? If Elvis read a copy of the journal…”
“He’d quote it to me while I’d scoop dog poo,” Professor Gentry said.
“Then Colonel Hollister gave it to him.” John had read another name in the journal, one that held immediate significance for him. “Rosa! Archibald mentions her. It said she was just a kid then.”
“If it’s in the journal…” Professor Gentry said.
“Then Colonel Hollister believes it.”
“And your Rosa is in danger.”
On the way back to town, John’s foot bounced against the floor mat. He kept thinking about Rosa, what she knew, what she didn’t tell him. He thought about seeing her again, and wondered whether she’d be happy to see him. He hoped that she’d embrace him, let him hold her, run his fingers along the narrow muscles in her lower back. He doubted that would happen. She’d probably be awkward and uncomfortable, subtly hinting that he should leave. Still, he needed to see her.
He read an entry near the journal’s end. Professor Gentry stuck his head between the front seats, trying to read over John’s shoulder, but John ignored him.
July 23, 1867
After years of trying to conceive, Louisa and I finally succeeded. Fortunately, several of her relatives had journeyed from New Mexico to help with the delivery. I say fortunately because the birthing was so unusual that a normal doctor would have been hard pressed to continue after the first child was born.
Two days ago, Louisa gave birth to six children, two boys and four girls, in succession.
After the delivery, I walked over to a chair and collapsed. The experience exhausted me. I could only imagine what Louisa went through. From the chair, I looked around the room at Louisa’s mother and aunts. They shared similar features, the shape of the nose and jaw line in particular. I thought they shared these similarities because they had the same parents, but looking at them I realized it was because they were like my children, born mere minutes apart.
Louisa’s mother and aunts decided it would be best if they took five of the children with them to New Mexico. Louisa and I agreed and kept the oldest boy. We named him Dominic Oscar Abernathy and swore never to tell him about his siblings.
“Learning anything useful?” Professor Gentry asked, leaning over John’s shoulder.
“It’s just a book,” John said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Then how come you keep reading it?”
September 3, 1901
I cough more often than I care to admit. The nurse comes running when she hears me caught in a fit. My body becomes spastic and uncontrollable, but the soothing presence of the young woman helps. She reminds me of my beautiful Louisa. I miss her. She still visits me in my dreams, but I am becoming senile and I think it hurts her to see my mind deteriorate. She left twenty years ago. It was a mutual decision based on the need to protect our son. I knew it would end soon enough when I started to show my age and she remained as beautiful as the day we met. I’ll never forget that warm, sunny day. On my fiftieth birthday, we ventured into the mountains for a weekend retreat and I came back alone. I told everyone that there had been an accident, but Louisa turned into an eagle and flew south to her family and our other children. I often wonder what of Louisa is in Dominic. He has never shown any sign of the abilities she possesses, but that doesn’t mean they are not there, lying dormant.
Sheriff Masters’s siren could be heard in the plaza as they turned off the highway, a faint chirping that grew louder with each block, until the two-toned alarm filled the square, forcing cars to pull to the side of the road and pedestrians to run onto sidewalks.
The plaza looked normal, with the exception of the people staring at them, whispering to each other. John searched the crowd for Colonel Hollister or his men. He sighed and relaxed in his seat, not seeing anyone looking like they worked for the Air Force, the clean shaven faces, the crew cuts, the heavy artillery. They might have been through already, searched the plaza, or they were still cleaning up Leadbelly’s fire, but they weren’t there now, and John hoped that meant Rosa was safe.
The sheriff parked in front of Rosa’s Restaurante, leaving the car in the middle of the street. John sprinted to the restaurant’s glass door.
“Where’s Rosa?” he asked, surprised that he wasn’t out of breath. The high school girl who worked last night was back, doing the lunch
shift.
“She’s not here.”
“Well, where is she?” John asked. She glanced at the sheriff.
“It’s okay, darling,” the sheriff said. “No one’s in trouble. We just need to know where Rosa is.”
“I don’t know. She called in saying she was taking a vacation, that she’d be gone for a while.”
“How long?” John asked.
“I don’t know, she didn’t say.”
“No, how long ago did she call?” John asked, grabbing her arm.
“Sometime this morning, before we opened,” she said, taking a step backward, clutching the menus in front of her chest.
“What about Jose?” Sheriff Masters asked. He put his hand on John’s shoulder and John stepped back, bumping into a chair, looking at the scuff marks on his shoes.
“He’s not here either. He called in saying he was taking a vacation, too.”
“Has anyone been to her house, checked on them or anything?” John asked.
“Yeah, Jed, the line cook, lives with Jose. He said he took them to the bus station this morning. Uh, he shouldn’t be back there.”
While they were talking, Professor Gentry had slinked into the kitchen. He held a lid in his hand, inhaling the smoke from a steaming pot as it lingered above the stove.
“Professor!” John yelled. “Get out here! We gotta get to the bus station!”
He ambled out of the kitchen eating chips from a small, paper bag.
“Really?”
“John, I don’t get into town that often.”
“That’s obvious.”
The bus station was a blue art deco building on the corner of New Mexico Avenue and West National Avenue, a few blocks from the Plaza. The building’s edges were rounded and a neon Greyhound sign extended above the entrance. White wings stretched from the sides of the building, shading travelers who waited for the two buses that could dock there and currently one idled. It reminded John of an image from his Survey of Great Artistic Movements Expressed as Public Transportation Buildings textbook. The sheriff trotted to the counter, asked if Rosa and Jose had bought bus tickets. The attendant told them they boarded the bus for Albuquerque at 9:30 a.m., twenty minutes after she’d left the motel.
