"Well now, what have we got here?" said Oral. "It looks like a picnic and I flat missed it good. Not the first time, I'll tell you. I smell peanut butter I'm not mistaken. You want to get in here and ride?"
"What for?" said Maggie.
"Then don't. Good afternoon. Nice talking to you."
"All right, I will." Maggie opened the door and got in. She couldn't say why, it just seemed like the right thing to do.
"I've seen you in town," said Oral.
"I've seen you, too."
"There's a lot more to life than you dream of stuck on this out-of-the-way planet, I'll tell you that. There's plenty of things to see. I doubt you've got the head for it all. Far places and distant climes. Exotic modes of travel and different ways of doing brownies."
"I've been over to Waco and Fort Worth."
"That's a start."
"You just say you're a space person, don't you," said Maggie, wondering where she'd gotten the courage to say that. "You're not really, are you?"
"Not anymore I'm not," said Oral. "My ship disintegrated completely over the Great Salt Lake. I was attacked by Mormon terrorists almost at once. Spent some time in Denver door-to-door. Realized I wasn't cut out for sales. Sometime later hooked up with a tent preacher in Bloomington, Indiana. Toured the tristate area, where I did a little healing with a simple device concealed upon my person. Couldn't get new batteries and that was that. I was taken in by nuns outside of Reading, Pennsylvania, and treated well, though I was forced to mow lawns for some time. Later I was robbed and beaten severely by high-school girls in Chattanooga, where I offered to change a tire. I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. Learned you can rely on 'em to kick you in the ass." Oral picked up a paper sack shaped like a bottle and took a drink. "What's your daddy do? If I'm not mistaken, he sells nails."
"That's not my daddy, that's my uncle. My father disappeared under strange circumstances."
"That happens. More often than you might imagine. There are documented cases. Things I could tell you you wouldn't believe. Look it up. Planes of existence we can't see, or not a lot. People lost and floating about in interdimensional yogurt."
"You think my father's somewhere like that?"
"I don't know. I could ask."
"Thank you very much."
"I got this shirt from a fellow selling stuff off a truck. Pierre Cardin irregular is what it is. Dirt cheap and nothing irregular about it I can see. Whole stack of 'em there by your feet."
"They're all blue."
"Well, I know that."
"Where are we going now?"
"My place. Show you my interstellar vehicle and break open some cookies. You scared to be with me?"
"Not a lot."
"You might well ask why I make no effort to deny my strange origin or odd affiliation. I find it's easier to hide out in the open. You say you're from outer space, people tend to leave you alone. I've lived in cities and I like the country better. Not so many bad rays from people's heads. To say nothing of the dogshit in the streets. What do you think? You have any opinion on that? People in small towns are more tolerant of the rare and slightly defective. They all got a cousin counting his toes. I can fix nearly anything there is. Toasters. TVs. Microwave ovens. Everything except that goddamn ship. If Radio Shack had decent parts at all, I'd be out of here and gone."
Oral parked the truck under the low-hanging branches of a big native pecan. The roots ground deep in the rigid earth, squeezed rocks to the surface like broken dishes. The tree offered shade to the small aluminum trailer, which was round as a bullet. Oral had backed it off the road some time before. The tires were gone, tossed off in the brush. The trailer sat on rocks. Oral ushered Maggie in. Found Oreos in a Folger's coffee can, Sprite in a mini- fridge. A generator hacked out back. The trailer smelled of wine and bananas and 3-In-One oil. There was a hot plate and a cot. Blue shirts and trousers and socks.
"It's not much," said Oral. "I don't plan to stay here any longer than I have to."
"It's very cozy," said Maggie, who'd been taught to always say something nice. The trailer curved in from the door to a baked plastic window up front. The floor and the walls and the roof were explosions of colored wire and gutted home computers. Blue lights stuttered here and there.
"What's all this supposed to be?" said Maggie.
"Funky, huh?" Oral showed rapid eye movement. "No wonder they think I'm crazy. The conquest of space isn't as easy as the layman might imagine. I figure on bringing in a seat from out of the truck. Bolt it right there. Need something to seal up the door. Inner tubes and prudent vulcanizing ought to do it. You know about the alarming lack of air out in space?"
"I think we had it in school."
"Well, it's true. You doing all right at that place?"
The question took Maggie by surprise. "At school you mean? Sort of. Okay, I guess."
"Uh-huh." Oral hummed and puttered about. Stepped on a blue light and popped it like a bug. Found a tangle of wire from a purple Princess phone and cut it free. Got needle-nose pliers and twisted a little agate in to fit. "Wear this," he told Maggie. "Hang it round your waist and let the black doohickey kind of dangle over your personal private things."
"Well, I never!" Maggie didn't care for such talk.
"All right, don't. Run home all your life."
"You've been spying on me."
"You want a banana? Some ice cream? I like to crumble Oreos over the top."
"I think I better start on home."
"Go right up the draw and down the hill. Shortcut. Stick to the path. Tonight's a good night to view the summer constellations. Mickey's in the Sombrero. The Guppy's on the rise."
"I'll be sure and look."
When Maggie was twelve, Aunt Grace went to Galveston on a trip. The occasion was a distant cousin's demise. Uncle Ned went along. Which seemed peculiar to Maggie, since they wouldn't eat together, and seldom spoke.
"We can't afford it, God knows," said Aunt Grace. "But Albert was a dear. Fought the Red menace in West Texas all his life. Fell off a shrimper and drowned, but how do we know for sure? They'd make it look accidental."
She left Maggie a list of things to eat. Peanut butter and Campbell's soup. Which was mostly what she got when they were home. Aunt Grace said meat and green vegetables tended to give young girls diarrhea and get their periods out of whack.
"Stay out of the ham and don't thaw anything in the fridge. Here's two dollars, that's for emergencies and not to spend. Call Mrs. Ketcher, you get sick. Lock the doors. Come straight home from school and don't look at the cable."
"I'm scared to stay alone," said Maggie.
"Don't be a 'fraidy cat. God'll look after you if you're good."
"Don't tell anyone we're gone," said Uncle Ned. "Some greaser'll break in and steal us blind."
"For God's sake, Ned, don't tell her that."
Uncle Ned tried to slip a paper box in the backseat. Maggie saw him do it. When they both went in to check the house, she stole a look. The carton was full of potato chips and Fritos, Cheetos and chocolate chip cookies. There was a cooler she hadn't seen iced down with Dr Peppers and frozen Snickers and Baby Ruths. There were never any chips or candy bars around the house. Aunt Grace said they couldn't afford trash. But all this stuff was in the car. Maggie didn't figure they'd be bringing any back. When the car was out of sight, she went straight to the garage and punched an ice pick hole in the kerosene can that hid Uncle Ned's stash of magazines. She did it on a rust spot so Ned'd never notice. Then she went out back and turned over flat rocks and gathered half a pickle jar of fat brown Texas roaches that had moved up from Houston for their health. Upstairs she emptied the jar where Aunt Grace kept her underwear and hose. Downstairs again she got the ice pick and opened the freezer door and poked a hole in one of the coils. In case the roasts and chickens and Uncle Ned's venison sausage had trouble thawing out she left the door open wide to summer heat.
"There," said Maggie, "y'all go fuck yourselves good." She didn'
t know what it meant, but it seemed to work fine for everyone else.
When Maggie was thirteen, Jimmy Gerder nearly caught her. By now she knew exactly what he wanted and ran faster. But Jimmy had been going out for track. He had the proper shoes, and it was only a matter of time. Purely by chance she came across Oral's gimmick in the closet. The little black stone he'd twisted on seemed to dance like the Sony when a station was off the air. Why not, she thought, it can't hurt. Next morning she slipped it on under her dress. It felt funny and kinda nice, bouncing on her personal private things. Jimmy Gerder caught her in an alley. Six good buddies had come to watch. Jimmy wore his track outfit with a seven on the back. A Marble Creek Sidewinder rattler on the front. He was a tall and knobby boy with runny white-trash eyes and bad teeth. Maggie backed against a wall papered with county commissioner flyers. Jimmy came at her in a fifty-meter stance. His mouth moved funny; a peculiar glaze appeared. A strange invisible force picked him up and slammed him flat against the far alley wall. Maggie hadn't touched him. But something certainly had. Onlookers got away fast and spread the word. Maggie wasn't much of an easy lay. Jimmy Gerder suffered a semimild concussion, damage to several vertebrae and ribs.
She hadn't seen Oral in over a year. On the streets sometime, but not at the extraterrestrial aluminum trailer by the river.
"I wanted to thank you," she said. "I don't get chased anymore. How in the world did you do that?"
"What took you so long to try it out? Don't tell me. I got feelings, too."
Nothing seemed to have changed. There were more gutted personal home computers and blue lights, or maybe the same ones in different order.
"You wouldn't believe what happened to me," said Oral. He brought out Oreos and Sprites. "Got the ship clear out of the atmosphere and hit this time warp or something. Nearly got eat by Vikings. Worse than the Mormons. Fixed up the ship and flipped it out again. Ended up in medieval Europe. Medicis and monks, all kinds of shit. Joined someone's army in Naples. Got caught and picked olives for a duke. Look at my face. They got diseases you never heard of there."
"Oh my ," said Maggie. His face didn't look too good. The bad albino skin had holes like a Baby Swiss.
"I taught 'em a thing or two," said Oral, blinking one pink eye and then the other. "Simple magic tricks. Mr. Wizard stuff. Those babies'll believe anything. Ended up owning half of Southern Italy. Olive oil and real estate. Not a bad life if you can tolerate the smell. Man could make a mint selling Soft 'n Pretty and Sure."
"I'm glad you're back safe," said Maggie. She liked Oral a lot, and didn't much care what he made up or didn't. "What are you going to do now?"
"What can I do? Try to get this mother off the ground. I'm thinking of bringing Radio Shack to task in federal court. I feel I have a case."
Maggie listened to the wind in the trees. "Do you really think you can do it, Oral? You think you can make it work again?"
"Sure I can. Or maybe not. You know what gets to me most on this world? Blue. We got reds and yellows and greens up the ass. But no blue. You got blues all over." Oral put aside his Sprite and found a bottle in a sack. "You hear from your daddy yet?"
"Not a thing. I'm afraid he's gone."
"Don't count him out. Stuck in interstellar tofu, most likely. Many documented cases."
"Daddy hates tofu. Says it looks like someone threw up and tried again."
"He's got a point."
"What's it like where you come from, Oral? I mean where you lived before."
"You said you been to Fort Worth."
"Once when I was little."
"It doesn't look like that at all. Except out past Eighth Avenue by the tracks. Looks a little like that on a good day."
Maggie did fine in school after Jimmy Gerder left her alone. He cocked his head funny and walked with a limp. His folks finally sent him to Spokane to study forest conservation. By the time she reached sixteen, Maggie began to make friends. She was surprised to be chosen for the Sidewinderettes, the third finest pep squad in the state. She joined the Drama Club and started writing plays of her own. She was filling out nicely and gave Uncle Ned a wide berth.
They were still dirt-poor, but Uncle Ned and Aunt Grace attended several funerals a year. Two cousins died in Orlando not far from Disneyland, a car mishap in which both were killed outright. A nephew was mutilated beyond recognition in San Francisco, victim of a tuna-canning machine gone berserk. A new family tragedy could be expected around April, and again in late October when the weather got nice. Maggie was no longer taken in. She knew people died year round. They died in places like Cincinnati and Topeka where no one wanted to go. What Aunt Grace and Uncle Ned were doing was having fun. There wasn't much question about that. Maggie didn't like it, but there was nothing she could do about it, either.
When Maggie was eighteen, her play Blue Sun Rising was chosen for the senior drama presentation. It was a rousing success. Drama critic Harcourt Playce from San Angelo, Texas, told Maggie she showed promise as a writer. He gave her his personal card and the name of a Broadway theatrical producer in New York. The play was about a man who was searching for the true meaning of life on a world "very much like our own," as the program put it. There was no night at all on this world. A blue sun was always in the sky. Maggie wanted to ask Oral but was sure the principal wouldn't let him in.
Aunt Grace died a week after graduation. Maggie found her watching reruns of M*A*S*H. She secretly wrote a specialist in Dallas. Told him what had happened to her mother and Aunt Grace. The specialist answered in time and said there might be genetic dysfunction. They were making great strides in the field. He advised her to avoid any shows in syndication.
Life with Uncle Ned wasn't easy. With Aunt Grace gone, he no longer practiced restraint of any kind. Liquor came out of the nail bin at the store, and found its way to the kitchen. Girl and scientist magazines were displayed quite openly with National Geographic. Maggie began to jump when she heard a sound. There was a good chance Uncle Ned was there. Standing still too long was a mistake.
"You're going to have to stop that," said Maggie. "I mean it, Uncle Ned. I won't put up with it at all."
"You ought to get into gymnastics," said Uncle Ned. "I could work with you. Fix up bars and stuff out back. I know a lot more about it than you might think."
Maggie looked at Uncle Ned as if she were seeing him for the first time. His gaze was focused somewhere south of Houston. There seemed to be an electrical short in his face. His skin was the color of chuck roast hit with a hammer.
"I'm going to go," said Maggie. "I'm getting out of here."
"On what?" said Uncle Ned.
"I don't care on what, I'm just going. You try to stop me, you'll wish you hadn't."
"You haven't got busfare to the bathroom."
"Then I'll walk."
"You do and you'll get raped and thrown in a ditch."
"I can get that first part here. I'll worry about the ditch when I come to it."
"Don't expect any help from me. I haven't got two dimes to rub together."
"You will," said Maggie. "Some cousin'll get himself hacked up in a sawmill in Las Vegas."
"Now that's plain ignorant," said Uncle Ned. "Especially for a high-school graduate. There isn't a lot of timber in Nevada. That's something you ought to know."
"Good-bye, Uncle Ned."
It took maybe nine minutes to pack. She took Blue Sun Rising and a number two pencil. Left her Sidewinderette pep jacket and took a sensible cloth coat. It was the tail end of summer in Texas, but New York looked cold on NYPD Blue. She searched for something to steal. There were pawnshops all over New York. People stole for a living and sold the loot to buy scag and pot and ludes and whatever they could find to shoot up. There was no reason you couldn't buy food just as well. In the back of her aunt's closet she found a plastic beaded purse with eight dollars and thirty cents. Two sticks of Dentyne gum. Downstairs, Uncle Ned was watching the French National Girls' Field Hockey Finals. Maggie stopped at the front door.
"It was me poured kerosene on your magazines," she said. "I thawed all the meat out, too."
"I know it," said Uncle Ned. He didn't turn around. A girl named Nicole blocked a goal.
Hitchhiking was a frightening experience. She felt alone and vulnerable on the interstate. Oral's protective device was fastened securely about her waist. But what if it didn't work? What if she'd used it up with Jimmy Gerder? A man who sold prosthetic devices picked her up almost at once. His name was Sebert Lewis, and he offered to send her to modeling school in Lubbock. He had helped several girls begin promising careers. Many were now in national magazines.
When Sebert stopped for gas, Maggie got out and ran. There were trucks everywhere. A chrome black eighteen-wheeler city. They towered over Maggie on every side. In a moment she was lost. Some of the trucks were silent. Others rumbled deep and blinked red and yellow lights. There was no one about. She spotted a cafe through the dark. The drivers were likely all inside. It seemed like the middle of the night. French fries reached her on a light diesel breeze.
"I don't know what to do next!" she said aloud, determined not to cry. A big red truck stood by itself. A nice chrome bulldog on the front. It wouldn't hurt to rest and maybe hide from Sebert Lewis. She wrapped her coat around her and used her suitcase for a pillow. In a moment she was asleep. Only a short time later, a face looked directly into hers.
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