All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  The President pulled away from Keeley and rose slowly to her feet. Stiffly, she walked to the living room window, moving past Pooch as if guarding a wound, as if she’d just had surgery, though whether something had been removed or added she could not tell. The setting sun lit the distant treetops with flame, autumn reds and golds crackling in the blaze. Linda felt like her whole world was on fire. Lightning had struck and ignited the sky and everything was burning away. Time. Distance. Self. The blood in her veins and the molecules in her cells. Everything she’d ever known and believed and cherished. Shifting. Twisting. Lurching. Boiling away. The fire of memory that had sparked and smoldered since that high-school play so many months before raged brightly now in the safe and gentle spirit of her long-lost friend. Keeley had been the only hope and comfort she could find in those far-flung nights of horror and pain.

  And yet, in the end, even Keeley had abandoned her. Linda turned to face her friends. The flames of memory left a bitter ash of determination and truth-telling in her mouth. “Yeah, Keeley,” she said, her voice little more than a raspy whisper. “You left.” Her face reddened. “It was … Jesus! We were on the track team, for chrissake! We were popular! And then I’m pregnant and you’re getting fucked by your uncle and the trial and my parents and we’re getting drunk every night … and … everybody looking at us like we were freaks! And you fucking left me.” Linda turned away and grabbed the window latch as if she were losing her balance. She took a long, slow breath. “And now you tell me we were abducted.” Her voice had hardened and grayed. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

  Keeley leaned forward on the sofa as if she might rise and join her old friend. “I know—”

  “You don’t know shit!” Linda screamed, whirling back. She took a couple of steps toward them. “I’m the goddamn President of the United States, Keeley! And these motherfuckers can just rip kids from their beds and force them—” She stopped for a moment, to choke down her grief. “Force them to….” She closed her eyes. “And there’s nothing I can do about it? What the hell was I thinking? I shouldn’t be President. I can’t control this. I couldn’t control it then and I sure as fuck can’t control it now!”

  “Oh, baby,” said Keeley.

  Linda turned away. “Those bastards took away everything I was, and I had to just lay there naked and let them do it.”

  Keeley rose and crossed the room, engulfing Linda in her flowing embrace. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “I let them,” Linda stiffened, shaking her head against Keeley’s apology, her voice still keen with hatred. “You didn’t let them. I let them.”

  “Yes, Cornfed. We both let them.” whispered Keeley.

  “Those fuckers,” said Linda. She let out a long, sputtering moan, like the wind gusting through an old barn. She relaxed a bit in Keeley’s arms. “There was no fighting them.”

  “No, there wasn’t.”

  “There wasn’t anything we could do,” Linda’s voice was softer now, the voice of a child in her mother’s arms.

  “There wasn’t anything we could do,” agreed Keeley.

  Linda stood silent for the longest time, just breathing into Keeley’s shoulder. Pooch and Cole sat still and attentive, as if in church. Chapin and Betty had taken up positions on either side of the humans. They scanned the room like security guards. At last Linda looked up and disengaged from Keeley’s embrace, wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, and turned to face the others.

  “I, um … I don’t really know what to do with all of this.” She reached up absently to smooth her hair. “I think I always knew. That night, when Spud took me people-hunting. I think I knew that that little girl was me. In the end, I think that’s why I ran. Why I’m here now. I needed this missing piece.” Linda looked down at her feet, then up at her friends. “But, Jesus, it hurts.” Her heart pounded, terrified of being judged by those she loved most. The shame of her helplessness at the hands of the aliens, hidden for decades in an old bureau drawer in the attic of her memory, threatened now to dismantle the strong, capable identity she’d managed to create for herself in the world. She looked Keeley in the eye. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. A slight smile washed briefly across Linda’s face, the first soft touch of sun after the storm had passed. “Turns out I’m just a human being after all.”

  Keeley returned her smile. “I think maybe we’re all we’ve got, Mrs. President,” she said. “Human beings like you and me and Cole and Pooch. Whatever happens next, I think it’s up to us.”

  Linda looked up at the ceiling, as though she could see right through it to the sky above. Then she looked back at her friends. Cole’s eyes were moist and warm with shared feelings. Pooch wore a grin as big as his beard. Keeley’s eyes, huge and fierce and defiant, seemed to stare right through her, as though she were seeing the work still before them. Linda shrugged. “I just want to hide,” she said.

  “Well you came to de right place, eh!” said Pooch heartily, lifting his beer and finishing it off. He wiped his mouth and beard and grinned even wider, his eyes as star-filled as the club chairs. “Fiche le camp, dis is,” he said. His voice was so full of laughter and good cheer that Linda couldn’t help but smile. “You get lost here!”

  Linda stepped up to Pooch’s chair and leaned down to hug him from behind. He reached up and rubbed her head roughly, the camaraderie of a teammate, or a fellow soldier. “Oh, Pooch,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “What did we ever do to deserve you?” She looked up at Cole, and then Keeley, who had returned to the sofa. “I so want to get lost here.”

  Cole nodded, knowing just how she felt. But something was disturbing him. His long, thin arms wove about his sides awkwardly, his hands stretching and twisting like radar dishes, looking for answers from deep space. His face twitched involuntarily as his nod turned to its opposite. An image of Grace, lying in her bed as evil aliens swarmed about her, rose in his mind. There could be no rest. Not yet. Not for them. “We can’t, can we?” he said, his voice rife with resignation and resolve. “We can’t get lost here.”

  Linda stood and stretched her neck, then stepped around Pooch’s chair. “No, Cole,” she said sadly. “We can’t.” She squatted down to scratch Betty’s chin. Betty raised her muzzle to show her just where to put those monkey fingers, the old covenant of domestication still in force. A wave of well-being washed up around Linda’s heart and she buried her face in the long fur of Betty’s neck. Chapin, calculating an opportunity, rose from Cole’s feet and wandered nonchalantly over, nosing his way in for a share.

  Keeley cleared her throat as if to call everyone back to work. Linda looked up. Keeley’s face held one last secret. “You know who that was,” she offered, statement and question wrapped as one.

  Linda frowned. “Who?”

  “That boy on the ship. The father of your miscarried child.”

  The words brought the whole thing into sharp focus, turning nightmare and memory into metal and flesh. There really had been a ship. And a beautiful boy. Linda closed her eyes and then opened them again so many years ago. The table underneath was bitter and slippery, the walls around her curved away in directions she couldn’t quite grasp. A small, gray-white being stood next to her shoulder, looking down at her with his huge, black almond eyes. He held a long, silver wand over her forehead, the tip almost touching her skin. Every now and then he blinked, both eyes folding backward into his skull, like a frog swallowing. Two more beings, taller and thinner than the others, their mirrored eyes yielding nothing, brought in a naked young man. The young man towered over them by a good foot, his hair dark and tousled, his face blank, his eyes elsewhere. She saw now that she knew that face, and tears spilled once again down her cheeks.

  She opened her eyes and looked at Keeley. “Earl?” she said.

  Keeley nodded. “Yeah, baby. It was Earl.”

  8.3

  Linda saw Cole’s huge grin and breathed a sigh of relief. “Good news, I take it?”

  Cole nodded, step
ping in from the hallway. He surveyed the room. Keeley was on the sofa now, Chapin and Betty bookending her in wet tongues, cold noses, and black and white fur. Pooch hummed in the kitchen, making a fresh stir-fry straight from their garden for dinner. His vaguely familiar tune filled the room with cheer. Linda sat in one of the huge armchairs, her legs pulled up underneath her. A fire burned in the woodstove, an old Jøtul #4 that looked like one of those statues from Easter Island. “Doctor says Grace is fine. Dad says she’s been awake since mid-afternoon, acting like her usual self.”

  “Did you talk with her?” asked Linda.

  “Nope. Right now she’s up at Cat and Jake’s with Emily. They found Dennis.” Cole crossed over, reaching out to pat Chapin’s head as he took the other chair.

  “He okay?” said Keeley.

  “Dad says he called Cat not long after we left, at Emily’s insistence. They hadn’t seen him. But later Cat got the notion to go look for him. She found him in the crawl space, under their back deck. She thought he was dead but when she wriggled in to get him she found that he was just asleep. Couldn’t wake him up. Just like Grace.”

  “Jesus,” said Linda, her voice almost a whisper.

  “Apparently he won’t wake up at all. So Dad walked Emily and Grace over to Cat and Jake’s and they’re watching over Dennis now.”

  “And Iain?” asked Linda.

  “He’s beating the crap out of his grandfather on the cribbage board. So far Dad owes him two pizzas.”

  “And no sign of this Rice guy?” asked Keeley. She’d argued against Cole’s calling home, worried that a call might lead the People to Cole’s children. And worried that it would lead them to her home as well. Pooch had assured her that it would be fine, insisting that Cole make the call. Keeley had looked fit to burst at the notion, but Pooch had held her in his arms and she’d finally agreed.

  Cole shook his head. “No sign at all. And Dad has hired a security service he worked with in St. Cloud. Turns out they have a branch in Burlington. So he’s now got round-the-clock armed guards at the house.”

  Keeley laughed. “Your Dad doesn’t fuck around, does he?” Betty woke up with the laughter and curled around to lick Keeley’s hand.

  “No,” Cole answered, letting his relief wash over him. “He doesn’t.”

  “I like your fadder, eh?” Pooch called from the kitchen, obviously listening to every word.

  Linda got up from her chair and seated herself on the rug at Cole’s feet, leaning against his leg. “That’s really great,” she said with relief, smiling up at him. By unspoken agreement, they’d both given in to the undeniable force that had drawn them together, as though they’d each had lodestones implanted in their hearts. In ways they did not yet comprehend, they had become a team. There was little use in fighting it; they would meet this challenge as one. Here, in the brief reprieve of Get Lost Farm, in the warm before the storm they both knew was coming, they reached out to each other for comfort and support. Tentatively, Cole began to massage Linda’s shoulder. Tentatively, Linda let him. All the evil aliens in the world could not overpower the tenderness and affection in that touch.

  Cole cleared his throat, checking his impulse to sink utterly into his heart. Linda had told him they had to help each other be smarter. He did not intend to let her down again. This was a time to stay focused. Cole turned to Keeley, picking up where they had left off. “So, you do this out-of-body thing whenever you want?” There was determination in his query. If they were going to stay a step ahead, they had to know how this all worked.

  Keeley shook her head, jangling the huge gold hoops that hung from her ears. “It’s not something I do at all, really,” she replied. “It’s more like it’s done to me. And then only rarely. A hand reaches down and pulls me out and away we go.”

  “And it’s because of these aliens?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I think so. Being with them has somehow loosened me from the flesh. Something the Nabbers are good at.”

  “The Nabbers?” asked Linda.

  Keeley laughed. “Sorry. My name for them.”

  “They steal our baby!” Pooch spat, disgust in his voice. Linda turned to see him standing in the doorway, a wooden spoon held high like a cutlass. He nodded decisively, as if nothing else needed to be said, then went back to his work.

  “And that was twelve years ago, you said?” asked Cole. Keeley’s earlier recounting of her experience had shuddered through his heart. To lose a child, a baby, to these creatures: he could hardly begin to comprehend. His face twitched in empathy.

  “Yeah. He’ll be twelve in November. We call him Jack.”

  Linda shifted a bit, put a hand on Cole’s calf, a further connection made manifest. She sighed. “Keeley, why don’t you hate them?”

  “Oh, sometimes I do.” Keeley smoothed her curly hair, now much redder than Linda remembered. “But … it’s complicated. Nothing is as easy as it seems like it should be.”

  “No argument from me,” said Linda with a bleak smile.

  Cole frowned in concentration, continuing to draw Keeley out. “So you’ve had these experiences throughout your adult life. Abductions … what have you. Out of body episodes. They took your baby. And you and Pooch bought this farm to … what? To kind of just … hide out? See if you could escape somehow?”

  “They take Pooch too, you know,” interjected Keeley. “That’s how we met.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Linda.

  “They fuck wit me!” called Pooch from the kitchen, stirring in the tempeh. “But I fuck wit dem back!”

  Keeley stared at her husband for a moment, lost in undisclosed thoughts. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek and she let it hang, as if honoring its presence. She turned to Cole. “We haven’t been hiding, Cole. There is no hiding.” She let her gaze fall to the President, seated on the floor at Cole’s feet. “We’ve been waiting for you to show up.”

  Linda let that sink in for a good long while, watching how her whole being wanted to push back against Keeley’s words. Yeah, right. Like I know what to do? It just got stranger and stranger. She felt like she was trapped in a sci-fi novel; there was no hiding. But Rice, and Spud, and those ships in the sky, were no mere fiction. And all of those forces seemed to be revolving around her. As if being the President of the United States actually meant something here. Linda scoffed at the thought, then caught herself. Perhaps it did mean something….

  Chapin yawned and stretched, rolling over to negotiate a belly rub. Keeley complied with the dog’s request. “So how did you know we were coming?” Linda finally asked.

  “Spud told me. The year you would arrive. With whom. Even the type of car you’d be driving. He told me the night you were sworn in as governor.”

  “Jesus!” said Linda. That had been … what? Over six years ago! The implications slowly sank in. “You know Spud?” The President winced. She did not want to hear the answer.

  “Well, that’s what they call him, these People from whom you’re running. He told me once. Said he thought it was funny.” Keeley frowned. “I don’t know his real name. I don’t even know if they have names.” She stopped petting the dog and leaned forward, bringing her face closer to Linda’s. “Think, Cornfed. Go find those memories. You’ve known him most of your life.”

  Linda turned away as if struck yet again, closing her eyes, letting the blow reverberate in the privacy of her own soul. As if she were falling, she reached up and clutched Cole’s hand, grasping it for strength. She breathed deeply, letting the images surface, letting the feelings wash over her soul, working to simply accept, to stop resisting, to let the whole truth of her past find a place to dwell in her conscious mind. The worst of the pain passed and she looked up at her friend. “Yeah,” she husked. “I know. He was there. That night. With Earl.”

  Keeley shooed the dogs off the sofa as Pooch came into the room with big crockery bowls.

  “You want more beer?” he asked Cole as he offered him the food.

  “Sure. Thanks.” Cole
handed the first bowl down to Linda and took the second. Pooch returned to the kitchen for the beer and the other two bowls, handed Cole the beer, then sat next to Keeley on the sofa.

  “One day I will break dat leetle fucker’s neck, eh?” Pooch said, with a smile that let you know he meant it. He forked a chunk of tempeh into his mouth.

  “You know Spud too, Pooch?” asked Cole.

  Keeley smiled. “Spud and Pooch have had a … let’s say a ‘special’ relationship.” She picked a large wedge of bell pepper out of her bowl and plunked it into Pooch’s. “For some reason, they brought the big guy here along to witness the implantation, when they put that fetus in me. When Pooch realized what had just happened, he managed to break free of his paralysis long enough to snap Spud’s arm.”

  Pooch gestured as Keeley spoke, as if he were breaking a twig. “Next time his neck,” he said again.

  “Not surprisingly, they haven’t abducted him since,” said Keeley.

  Cole and Linda looked at each other and grinned. The warmth of the Jøtul and the intimate connection with these two amazing souls overpowered the growing darkness just outside. For now, comfort and sanctuary. They would drink it deeply.