The Enigmatologist

by Ben Adams

“It’s a trailer park,” John said, leaning forward, his hands on the back of the front seat headrests.

  Handjive mumbled into his CB, the cadence of his voice sounding like he was introducing his back-up band. On the sparsely lit ground, surrounded by RVs, a glowing, blue rectangle appeared. Handjive swung the Winnebago over it, and tenderly squeezed it into the space, landing.

  “Home sweet home, man,” Handjive said, flipping some switches and turning off the motor.

  Handjive climbed out of the driver’s seat. He wore a sequined red jumpsuit like Leadbelly’s, but with a Latin-tinged pattern, like one of the sombreros hanging in Rosa’s.

  “John,” he said, sticking out his hand, “I’m real pleased to meet you. I mean that, man. It’s a real honor.”

  John shook Handjive’s hand. He glanced over at Leadbelly, a little confused, wondering what he’d told Handjive, disturbed that he had gained a reputation among Elvis impersonators. He didn’t know if it was because of his lineage, being the current carrier of the Abernathy name, or if it was because Leadbelly had pictures of John outside a hotel room photographing a client’s diaper clad husband tied to a pole while accountants wearing maroon robes and rubber unicorn masks flogged the husband with stale baguettes.

  Leadbelly opened the door. Metal steps descended. John gathered the journal from the kitchen table and followed them into the cool desert night.

  The only light came from the Christmas lights outside the mobile homes, and it took John’s eyes a couple of minutes to adjust. The artificial lights made everything look crisp and shiny. Without them, it would have been a black and white world, no place for people who glowed on the Vegas Strip.

  The park was also lit from above, by the stars. They covered the sky. John tilted his head back and spun around, gazing up in amazement. It was like the sky wasn’t affected by the light pollution from the trailer park. The cosmos was fully exposed and every night the trailer park residents could see their place in the expanding universe. Growing up in Denver, John had never seen the night sky uncontaminated by all the lights employed to make the dark less terrifying. Even when he went into the mountains, he was close enough to the city that its glow dulled the brilliance above. Looking up, John shrank at the size of it, feeling empty and bare, aware of his insignificance. He spun around, trying to find a landmark, something to ground him. Like everyone who grew up near the Rockies, he turned to where the mountains should have been, but they were far away and their silhouettes were bumps on the horizon.

  Handjive stepped from the RV, starlight bouncing off his jumpsuit, the cloak billowing behind him as he walked.

  “Nice cape,” John said.

  “You like it, man?” Handjive asked. “Check this out.” He grabbed the ends of the cape, held out his arms, and dropped to one knee.

  “That’s the showstopper right there, man. You’re letting the crowd know you’ve given them all you got. And, man, the ladies love it.”

  “Ladies love a man in a cape,” John said.

  Behind him, the sound of rusted metal moving. Four of the metal spikes that connected the Winnebago to the glowing discs underneath detached from the sides of the RV. They peeled away and plunged into the ground, anchoring the Winnebago as it rested on its metal frame. The other mobile homes were the same way, floating above the surface, but fastened.

  Gravel roads outlined the trailers, cutting the trailer park into the sections of a planned community. On the surface, it was like any other trailer park. There were open coolers by lawn chairs, broken stoves, hot water tanks, a tipped-over Weber Grill Master, outdoor TVs with aluminum-foiled antennas, orange extension cords running through open doors. There was only one thing that made it different from other trailer parks.

  “Everyone looks like Elvis Presley,” John said.

  Elvis impersonators stood in dimly lit doorways. Some nodded or waved to Leadbelly and Handjive, but most stood and watched them walk down the street.

  “This is Elvisville, man,” Handjive said. “It’s where all the Elvi live. It’s outta sight.”

  “All Elvis impersonators are aliens?” John said. “Figures.”

  “At first we were,” Leadbelly said. “Then it became a fad, man, and the humans put on the jumpsuit. They started taking all the good Elvis jobs.”

  “Now, man, we just sit here in Elvisville, waiting,” Handjive said.

  “Waiting for what?” Sheriff Masters asked.

  “The end of the world,” John said, tightly gripping the journal.

  They walked into the trailer park’s square. The square was a small park from another part of the country where summer meant cookouts, fireworks, and tubing at the lake. John combed the soft grass with his fingers. He lifted them and smelled summer, green and sunshine, under his fingernails. The stationary oak trees rested. Their leaves were inverted, sleeping. John touched the bark. Thick flakes, papery, but solid. In the middle of the park, in front of the gazebo, was a giant granite statue of Elvis from the early years, when his gyrations caused teenage riots. At the far end of the park, an old woman sat on a bench. She looked like she was waiting for an army of pigeons to flap at her feet and coo, call for her to toss them torn squares of day-old bread.

  Leadbelly stood by the tree, brushing grass with the toe of his boot. He flicked his head toward Handjive. Handjive tapped the sheriff on the arm and said something to Professor Gentry. The three of them disappeared between the trailers lining the park, joking about something John couldn’t hear.

  “Where are they going?” John asked.

  “The woman on the bench, man,” Leadbelly said. “You really need to go talk to her.”

  John knew who she was by the way Leadbelly acted, the reverential space given to her. But he didn’t know her name.

  “She’s Jonathon Deerfoot’s replacement, isn’t she? the colonist supreme or whatever? Who is she?”

  “Just go talk to her, man. That’s all I can say.”

  The bench was on the far side of the park, under a large elm tree. A concrete path led to it, but John avoided it. He cut across the grass instead. The lights in the trailers turned off, leaving the lampposts in the park as the only light. When they’d landed, John had heard televisions, radios, now there was silence. And the sound of his Chucks squeaking on the dew dripped grass.

  As John approached, the woman looked up. She was cocooned in a thick cardigan. It looked old, homemade. The off-white wool was frayed and fuzzy. The wooden buttons running down the front were chipped. Her dress flowed underneath it, ending at her ankles and the sandals on her feet. Deep wrinkles creased her skin. John could tell that black hair once covered her head, but now it was mostly gray.

  “So,” he said, sitting down next to her, “I’m supposed to talk to you.”

  “I’m glad you made it, John,” she said, patting him on the knee.

  There was something familiar about her, but it was a distant familiarity, like John had met her years ago and she had meant something to him at the time. He tried to remember who she was, a forgotten grade school teacher, a friend of his grandmother’s who baby-sat once, but the faces and people he recalled didn’t match the woman sitting next to him, and he couldn’t remember how he knew her, just that she was important.

  “I have a lot of questions, you know.”

  “I understand you’ve started to unlock your Sagittarian side.”

  “I guess,” John said, adjusting his glasses.

  “When we came here,” she said, turning to the park, “this land was nothing more than rocks and shrubs. Now look at it.”

  “You’ve turned it into another trailer park. Good job.”

  “People ignore trailer parks. They don’t like to be reminded of what they could become. And we still have so much work to do.”

  “You mean there’s work you need me to do. That’s why I’m here, right?”

  “Ricky Handjive wants to put in a water park. Can you imagine a water park out here?” She gestured to the trailers. The gesture was some
thing from his memory, from his childhood.

  “Why did you tell Rosa to sleep with me?”

  “Where would we put the wave pool?”

  “You can’t just trick people into sleeping together.”

  “Why not?”

  “What about love. Can’t you just let people fall in love?”

  “Do you love Rosa?”

  “I want to. You fucked it up for me, telling her to sleep with me. Now I’ll never know if it was real.”

  “There is so much you don’t understand about us.” She smiled and shook her head, almost mocking him. The way she looked at him, it stirred buried memories. It was a look that had been passed down through the generations, from his father, his grandfather. And beyond.

  “I understand plenty, Louisa.”

  “But you don’t understand telepathy,” she said, smiling and shaking her finger at him like a disapproving school teacher. “When you graduated from college we began conspiring to get you down here.”

  “Like Leadbelly getting his picture taken.”

  “Last year we had Rosa probe your mind while you slept. She saw who you really are and fell in love with you. She’s just been waiting for you to come to town. I know this has been hard for you, but think about how Rosa must feel. She didn’t know if you’d fall in love with her.”

  “She’s amazing! I would have…Doesn’t matter now,” John said, thinking about how he’d never see her again. He crossed his legs, folded his arms. His foot twitched involuntarily, keeping pace with the thoughts shooting through his head, the similarities between his situation and Archibald’s.

  Louisa took the journal from John, flipped through the pages.

  “I still miss him. You probably think twenty years is a long time to be with someone, but when you’ve outlived them by a hundred years…” She read a passage, sighing. “I was going to go back and be his housekeeper, but Archie asked me not to. He said he didn’t want me to see him as an old man, but watching his mind deteriorate was worse. They were going to name you Archibald. I thought it would have been a good name for you. Some names just fall out of fashion. It’s a shame. It’s a good name.”

  Louisa found a picture of John. He is in the front yard with a thick-ended, orange Wiffle ball bat. His father is pitching to him and John has just swung, missing the ball.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said. “You turned out well. It wasn’t fair, you being raised away from us, but you turned out well anyway.”

  “A lot of things aren’t fair,” John said, a photo of his dad sticking out of the book.

  “You see those stars up there?” She pointed to a grouping of bright stars along the southern horizon. “That’s Sagittarius. We’re from a planet called Chi Sagittarii Prime, in the armpit of the constellation.”

  “Everyone has a favorite armpit.” John studied the constellation lit above him like a million fresh ideas. He turned to Louisa, the journal open on her lap. “Louisa, about the journal…”

  “It’s important you know your history.”

  “When Archibald talked to Jonathon Deerfoot, he wasn’t really clear on how you guys got here.”

  “Archie was an intelligent man, but Earth’s science hadn’t progressed very far. So, Jonathon had to speak simply, in basic terms.”

  “Sounded like he was talking about a wormhole,” John said, thinking about the Cape Canaveral pilot, where John F. Kennedy Space Center was sucked through a wormhole and into outer space.

  “Think of the space around us, the subatomic space, like wrinkled aluminum foil. The smooth surfaces between the wrinkles are covered in tiny wormholes that lead everywhere in space. Long ago we developed the technology to latch onto one of these wormholes, expand it, and send objects through, seeding the universe.”

  “Because you’re basically my grandma, I’m avoiding the obvious sex joke.”

  “We probed the holes.”

  “You’re not making this easy.”

  “And found planets to colonize. It’s how we found Earth. This is all part of our history, our culture.”

  “Like being obsessed with Elvis?” John looked at the statue.

  “Like Sagittarius.” She pointed to the constellation again. “We teach our children to wave to it at night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, looking at John like he’d said something ridiculous, “someone might wave back.”

  Off in the distance, the last RV landed. The voices of the drivers were soft, but pronounced, in the silent park as they walked to another trailer, disappearing behind the click of a door.

  “It’s one of the traditions we pass to our children, a way of being connected to our home. It’s a simple thing, but traditions always are. That’s something you missed out on, our traditions, our mythology, our culture. If you had been raised with us, you’d understand it all.”

  She smiled. It was a superficial smile covering the machinery that had secretly moved around John all his life.

  “Why do you wear glasses?” she asked.

  “You’re the second person that’s asked me that.”

  “Can I see them?” She held out her hand.

  John took off his glasses, handed them to her. Louisa folded them and put them in her cardigan pocket.

  She held the journal in her lap, folded her hands over it. There was a benevolence about her, a grandmotherly quality that made John feel like he was wrapped in a warm quilt. Louisa cleared her throat and tilted her head, narrowing her eyes with menacing patience. She smirked expectantly.

  Confused, John crinkled his forehead. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. Something grew in his stomach. It was the same pain he endured when he drove into Las Vegas, only now it was deeper, magnified, and quickly overtook him.

  John latched onto his gut with both hands, putting pressure on it, trying to suppress the pain. But he couldn’t hold it back. As the pain grew, his stomach burned like there was a fire inside him that wanted to break out and blaze through the trailer park. John curled into a ball and fell forward, off the bench.

  There was screaming. The noises sounded distant, like they were being shouted across a canyon. And John didn’t recognize them as his.

  Convulsions. Twitchings growing into a seizure. His body writhed violently against the concrete. Leadbelly’s blurred image started running toward him, but Louisa held up her hand, stopping him. She left the bench and knelt above John.

  She put his head in her lap, stroked his hair. John’s skin exploded under her touch. He felt blood vessels pulsing in her hands, felt her skin loosen and absorb the moisture from his sweat, then tighten and dry. The identifying grooves on her fingertips, the dips and ridges, felt like a topographical map.

  “There, there,” she said. “It’ll be over soon.”

  John didn’t hear her say this. The severe pain deafened him. Everything beneath his skin burned, muscle, connective tissue, organs, nerves, marrow. But mostly his mind burned, like the heat was melting every thought and associated synapse. The fire was so intense and complete that he couldn’t remember a time without it, like it had existed from the day he was born, and was finally burning its way through him.

  Then the agony ended.

  Lying on the concrete, tears in his eyes, John felt physically different, not sick or hurt or that what he’d just experienced had damaged him. Instead, he was refreshed, aware of a boundless energy, making the world seem fuller, brighter, complete. His old self was gone, had been burned away, and in its place was something different, foreign, but comforting.

  A new connectivity existed that wasn’t there before, an expanded awareness. It was personal, intimate, like he was being gently caressed by a thousand hands, a thousand minds. He knew who they belonged to, where they were.

  “I feel you,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “I wish I had a better way to say it. But it’s like I know where you are. Leadbelly, I know where he is without looking, what he’s doing. I know where Handjive is and I haven’t se
en him since we landed. This feels…I know this feeling. I felt this before, when I first came to town.” The stomach pains first appeared as he drove through Las Vegas, returning when he met Rosa and Leadbelly. Thinking back, John recalled other moments when he’d felt this sensation, instances when the streets were dark and empty and the hotel was vacant and he had sat on the bed, bent over, clenching the fabric and skin around his stomach, fighting the kinks and twists underneath. Sitting next to Louisa, John realized that in those moments he wasn’t alone, that a Sagittarian must have been near. Watching him.

  “Your Sagittarian side was reaching out, trying to connect with us, but you didn’t know that, so you interpreted it as a stomach ache.”

  “There are nine hundred and twenty Sagittarians in the trailer park,” John said, like a calculator. He flinched, as if waking from a trance, then added, “I don’t know how I know that. I just do.”

  He knew the location of every Sagittarian in the park without looking. He felt them in his chest, his head, his body. There were three different types. One hundred and twenty-nine like Leadbelly and Handjive. They formed a border around the park, watching John. Two hundred and fifteen like Louisa. And five hundred and forty-two of another group. And within those groups there were the subtle variations of individuals, their essences like fingerprints.

  But this awareness wasn’t limited to just the Sagittarians. John also discerned Sheriff Masters and Professor Gentry, although it was more like the lack of feeling, a human emptiness among the Sagittarians.

  John pushed himself from the grass, sat back on the bench. A few tears still leaked from his eyes, obscuring his sight. He rubbed them away, and was surprised at what he saw. When he was twelve, John realized his vision was fading when the clues of his crossword blurred, but looking around the park, his world was clear.

  “My glasses.” John pointed to the black frames sticking out of Louisa’s pocket. “They were what were holding me back? keeping me from my Sagittarian side?”

  “If it were only that simple,” she said, tucking them further into her pocket.

  “Why did you ask for them?”

  “So you wouldn’t break them,” she said, with a grandmother’s certainty. “You had built a pretty substantial mental blockade. By accepting who you are, your past, your potential, you created a crack in that barrier. This allowed the Elvises to penetrate your mind while we talked and fully break the barrier down.”