Chapter 9
In his usual energetic fashion, Matt had the announcement about the town meeting up on his website the next morning, and flyers in the high school, at Stirling’s and in other strategic locations around town by the afternoon. The meeting took place the following evening. Of course he’d reserved the biggest forum in Mildred, that being the high school gym, which doubled as an auditorium. It had banks of bleachers on one side that could be telescoped back to the wall and a stage with a burgundy velvet curtain at one end. Matt had talked Lu into having the basketball team set up a couple of hundred folding chairs on the polished wood floor as soon as they were done with practice. When she and I arrived for the meeting, the gym was echoing with loud conversation and a metallic clanging as the extra chairs Matt had had to rustle up were unfolded. There were nearly twice as many people as even he had expected, and he was running around directing the placement of the chairs, self-importantly tapping the podium mike up on the stage, and glad-handing new arrivals.
“Whattya think, Simon?” he said when he saw Lu and me. “Looks like at least a few people are taking this seriously.” Before I could answer he rushed off to perform a lighting check. I made Lu sit in the back corner with me, so I could keep an eye on both the crowd and the proceedings without craning my neck. She lifted Albert out of his carrier and held him on her lap, where we could all see each other.
I scanned the room to see who had shown up. All the way up in the front row I could see the tops of the Cowboys’ hats next to Margaret Quitclaim’s silvery head, and Arnold Barns was in animated conversation with Brad Pentane and a couple of other student-body skeptics over on the far left side, near the exit, where they could make a quick getaway if things got boring. A number of my other students were in attendance as well, and I spotted Myrtle Bench’s swath of black hair, with Madame Malesherbes’s more severe coiffure to her right. Dale Twombly was at Myrtle’s left hand, talking earnestly to her as she gazed at the floor. Also in the front row, not far from the Cowboys, was Javier Shivwits, looking up at Matt expectantly with his hands folded in his lap. Sheriff Dave Bacco was there with his wife and all his kids, sitting as far from the Cowboys as he could get. In fact, a large fraction of the town’s population seemed to be represented, although Parnell, I noticed, was absent. There were also a couple of unfamiliar faces – youngish, bulky men in suits, presumably curious tourists. What they were doing in Mildred in January was an interesting question. There were also, to Matt’s delight, a reporter and a cameraman, who had an LA look about them.
Matt dimmed the overhead lighting to signal the start of the meeting, leaving the podium isolated in a dramatic shaft of light. The boisterous crowd gradually quieted as he waited patiently in the spotlight.
“I want to thank you all for coming,” he boomed finally, in a painfully amplified voice. “Although the events of Christmas Eve were observed all up and down the Sierra front, and I’m sure we’re all quite familiar with them, I believe this is the first meeting that’s been called for the express purpose of discussing them and deciding on a course of action. I’m gratified that so many of you have shouldered the responsibility to be a part of this process.
“I’ve talked to many of you personally about the Christmas Eve lights,” he went on, “and I’m sure most of you have at least glanced at the website. The response to that has been overwhelming and very exciting. One thing it shows pretty clearly is that we’re all in basic agreement about what we saw; but there’s a lot of disagreement about how to interpret what we saw. If you’ve looked at the site recently, you know there have been several new postings in the last couple of days, including one that may go a long way toward resolving some of the disagreements. But maybe we should leave that discussion until the defenders of the various theories have given us their current thinking.”
Don Swayzee was waving his hand before Matt finished talking. Matt sat down in a folding chair near the podium while Don clumped up to the stage on worn boot heels and began an impassioned denunciation of the Federal government’s stealthy encroachment on our everyday lives, the most recent example of which was the weapons test or perhaps, more sinister still, the surveillance measures suggested by the appearance of the mysterious lights over Mildred. He cataloged a few of the more egregious transgressions of the past – cancer-producing nuclear tests, New York subway riders used as guinea pigs for germ warfare experiments, the suspicious events in Roswell NM, which he suggested might provide a bridge between the possibility of alien incursions and the much more pervasive problem of creeping despotism.
“I know some of you folks want to look a lot farther away than Washington DC for the cause of the lights we saw,” he said grimly, gripping the podium with both hands. “I’m sorry to tell you that’s exactly what they want you to do. I’m sure the Feds are real happy about that latest posting on the website. It’s so perfect for their purposes you’ve got to wonder whether they might not have put it up there themselves. They’d like nothing better than to have us all aiming our telescopes at Mars and looking for little green men in our backyards. That way, they’re free to get on with whatever their real business is, which is in no way beneficial to us, you can be sure.” Harold Clare led a small but enthusiastic burst of applause.
“As I see it,” Don finished up, “our job here is first to recognize the nature of what’s going on and then mobilize to find out exactly what it is they’re doing up there with their lights, publicize it,” he nodded at the cameraman, “and embarrass the hell out of them. That’s the only way to smoke ‘em out. Bottom line is, we’re talking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness here. We’ve got a right and a duty to defend ourselves against anyone who’d try to abridge our fundamental freedoms. If we work together,” he paused for emphasis, “we can take back our lives from these bean-counting, paper-pushing, power-hungry weasels. I hope I can count on your support.” About half the audience joined in the applause this time as Don stalked back to his chair, although I thought the clapping had a polite quality to it.
“Thank you, Don, for sharing your concerns with us,” said Matt, back at the microphone. “I think the way we should organize things here is to let folks say their piece first about what they think the lights were. After that, we can spend some time talking about what our response should be. Is there anyone else who wants to give their point of view?”
Father MacGill took the stage next, neatly dressed in his dark suit and white priestly collar. He gazed down on us mildly for a moment or two before beginning: “I don’t know how our light show affected you all,” he said. “Some of you were thrilled, like me; some were probably shocked or even frightened. But all of us, I think, had one feeling in common, namely, a tremendous sense of awe at the beauty and mystery, the . . . potential, of those lights. Martians or meteors or whatever they were, they were certainly celestial visitors of some kind. Probably many of us couldn’t help thinking about another mysterious light in the East, 20 centuries ago. I for one believe we were intended to make that connection.
“Be that as it may, I also think we’re all a bit stunned to realize that the world still contains this kind of mystery – even though it’s all around us, every day, living as we do in one of the most beautiful spots on this beautiful planet, with our mountains, our deserts, our miraculous desert river, our towering clouds and grand vistas. But how easy it is to overlook all that, to get used to it, to see it as just wallpaper, if we see it at all. I wonder how many of you have ever taken the trouble to get down on your knees out there in the sagebrush.” The coughing and restless stirring of the audience suddenly congealed into a long, silent moment. “To get down on your hands and knees and look carefully at the sand,” he went on, and then paused expectantly. A few hands were raised after a second or two, once the crowd had traveled its mini-rollercoaster of terror and then relief that the Reverend wasn’t going to suggest some sort of ecstatic desert-prophet prayer ceremony, but had a more concrete observational experience in mind.
/>
“If you’ve ever done that, then you’ve seen that our desert sand is teeming with tiny, almost invisible plants, some of which even have beautiful, almost microscopic blossoms, as you’ll know if you’ve looked at them with a magnifying glass. Hardy, courageous little things scratching out a living in this extreme environment. And yet” (here a note of sadness or resignation entered his well trained speaking voice) “we never notice that strange and vibrant world – we just walk over it, thoughtlessly, grinding those magical blossoms under our feet.” He paused again, and then suddenly boomed out, “I believe that kind of carelessness, that failure to NOTICE, that tendency to lose ourselves in the minutiae, to sleepwalk, really, through our daily lives, is why the Lord must sometimes choose somewhat showier means of waking us up. Perhaps we’re fortunate that in this case He’s chosen to go with a harmless light show, instead of hitting us over the head with, say, an earthquake or a tornado.” In the audience a few heads were nodding in agreement.
The Reverend went on to suggest that, given this habit of the Lord’s of occasionally yanking on our leashes, so to speak, it was important not to focus too strongly on finding a literal explanation of the lights. Perhaps Don was right, and they were some kind of test that had gotten away from those bumblers in the Pentagon. Or maybe they represented a more astounding possibility, potential contact with non-human beings. They could even have been simply a natural celestial display of some kind, although you could tell that in the Reverend’s judgment the latter possibility was a remote one. His point was that it didn’t really matter. Whatever the mundane explanation, and he meant the word in its literal sense of worldly, such events were still part of the Lord’s plan, and represented His efforts to remind us of the richer and stranger universe underlying our routine daily lives of work, play, social interaction, and Internet searches. “Whatever those lights ‘really’ were,” he said, hooking quotation marks next to his protuberant ears, “they were certainly the Lord’s call, not just to WAKE UP to the wonders of Creation, but to look deep into our own souls, to examine our lives and behavior more closely, and to ‘clean up our act.’ Having done that,” he concluded, “we’ll be able to face the outcome with equanimity, whether it’s agents of the Federal government or tourists with tentacles from the Andromeda Galaxy. I’m not sure which would be scarier,” he said, drawing an appreciative chuckle from the crowd, “but if we get our own houses in order, as the Lord is clearly reminding us to do – and He never loses hope that one of these times we’ll actually get it together – then we’ll be able to handle either one.”
There was a warm round of applause for Father MacGill’s open-minded and optimistic approach, during which I leaned over and whispered to Lu, “Well that’s certainly vague enough. The Padre’s not one to commit himself.” “It’s pretty much the same as his Christmas sermon,” she whispered back approvingly. Albert slept peacefully on her lap.
Matt was back at the microphone, thanking Father MacGill for giving us all some perspective on this strange situation, and reminding us that the Lord’s vision can encompass the supernatural along with the natural, not to mention the extraterrestrial and even the Federal. “Seeing as how Father MacGill has brought it up,” he added, “Is there anyone here who’d like to make the case for a purely natural phenomenon? At least one person I’ve talked to, and on the website as well, has suggested that the lights were simply meteors, tiny pebbles burning up in the upper atmosphere, like any other shooting stars. Anyone care to defend that point of view?” I knew this was a direct challenge to me; but I also knew that even if meteors were the most likely explanation, I didn’t know enough about the behavior of such things to be able to explain the odd motions of the lights that had so struck all the observers. I was too cautious to put my logical positivist neck on the chopping block in that congregation of believers, but I was hoping there was someone more knowledgeable in the crowd who would take up the gauntlet. In this I was disappointed. Whether Matt had intimidated his audience, or whether the meteor idea simply didn’t have any other advocates, nobody said a word. To emphasize the total lack of support for any theory of natural causes, Matt allowed the silence to extend until it became uncomfortable, at least to me. I felt my face getting hot. Finally he went on with his own remarks, as if something had been decided by that silence.
“I’m going to grasp the nettle here,” he said, “and state outright my personal belief that the lights represent evidence of extraterrestrial incursion on our planet.” An excited murmur built and then gradually subsided in the crowd. Matt waited for quiet before proceeding. “Forty-eight hours ago I would probably have been much more cautious about suggesting such an extraordinary thing. But since then we’ve had a posting on the website that is so unequivocal, and from such an apparently reputable source, that I find it very hard to dismiss. And while I commend the Reverend MacGill’s call for introspection and adjustment in our own lives – that’s always a good idea – like Don, I believe this phenomenon calls for a more concrete and aggressive response on our part, as a community.
“Folks,” he said, leaning forward over the podium, “I’ve lived and worked in this town for 25 years. I’ve taught a whole generation of your kids. I’ve worked hand in hand with you in your pastures and your gardens and your barns, I’ve hung out with you over coffee and apple pie at Stirling’s. You know me. I’m not a crank or a crazy. Now, we’ve had a few wild postings on the website, we all recognize those. I’m just as skeptical as you are about reports of alien abductions, weird medical experiments, examinations of people’s private parts on the far side of the Moon, and so on.” There was a shocked silence in the auditorium. “But I firmly believe that everything we saw on Christmas Eve is consistent with the idea, the fact I’m going to call it, that someone, not from this planet, landed up on Devil’s Table that night. The very graphic and detailed website posting from the anonymous physicist merely validates what I’ve believed from the beginning. They’re here, and we can’t just sit here scratching our heads. We need to do something about it!”
It felt as though all the chairs had suddenly lifted a couple of inches off the floor, and loud conversations broke out in a dozen different spots in the audience. Javier Shivwits swiveled around in his chair and anxiously surveyed the suddenly chaotic scene. Matt was silenced as the rumble of conversation grew to a roar, and even Myrtle Bench was examining the backs of her hands excitedly. The two beefy tourists were looking around as though they’d blundered into a lunatic asylum. Meanwhile, for the first time in my memory, Arnold Barns and his pals actually looked happy. I could feel my face getting red. I’d begun to realize that Matt Matawan, who was after all my best friend even though he annoyed the hell out of me, was practically staking his whole reputation on that phony crap I’d invented for his website. I looked over at Lu, who stared back at me wide-eyed and with raised eyebrows. “You should say something,” she yelled over the din. “He’s really going out on a limb.” On her lap Albert was now awake, gazing calmly at the ceiling as though he were puzzled by the sudden clamor but had more important matters to think about. The cameraman from LA had worked his way back through the roiling crowd to a point from which he could get video of both the stage and the audience, while the reporter poked at his smart phone.
When the tumult failed to subside, Javier Shivwits took over the podium from Matt and attempted to calm the audience, using his best administrative manner. He was nearly a foot shorter than Matt, slim and elegantly attired as always in a dark suit and colorful but tasteful necktie. He’d affected a carefully shaped shadow of mustache ever since someone had told him it made him look like Johnny Depp. “Friends, friends!” he said, and then “Friends, friends! Please!” His disapproving look suggested that he might have to assign a lot of detentions unless things calmed down right away. Quiet gradually returned, with only occasional loud afterthoughts here and there, like the terminal sniping in a kettle of popcorn.
“Friends,” said Javier Shivwits, “Matt has
taken a very strong position here, whether we agree or not, and I think we owe him our thanks for crystallizing the discussion. Some of us may be shocked by his proposal, or even frightened. We need not to fly off the handle, but to discuss things calmly and rationally and make some decisions. Letting our emotions take over will not help to clarify the situation.” Javier’s long experience in quieting unruly mobs of children, along with the subliminal note of menace in his principal’s voice, finally had its effect, and the crowd came to order. He then called on Matt to explain his thinking more carefully.
“Nothing I’ve said,” Matt began, “negates Father MacGill’s point about what’s been going on. I think we can all, with maybe a couple of exceptions, agree that whatever those lights were, the Lord has His hand in them, and as always He’s in charge of the operation. But the Reverend has given us what amounts to a very general prescription. I don’t think we should just retreat to our churches or our closets and spend a lot of time praying or contemplating our navels. Although maybe we should do some of that, too. Just as much as the Reverend, I see this as a sign, but a sign that requires us to act. What we do depends, of course, on what it was that we saw out there.” He looked down, to collect his thoughts.
“There is, in my opinion, absolutely no evidence that the phenomena we observed on Christmas Eve were caused by any human agency, governmental or otherwise.” The Cowboys emitted a loud, joint raspberry from the front row. Javier Shivwits frowned. “Now hear me out, Don and Harold,” Matt went on. “There’s no indication that any human aircraft ever built has the kind of capabilities we saw in those things the other night – that kind of speed, that maneuverability, those rates of acceleration. You might argue that it’s some kind of secret program, but I for one don’t believe it would be possible to keep a program like that completely secret. Some kind of rumors would have leaked by now.”
“You say evidence, but what the hell evidence is there of extraterrestrials, for god’s sake,” Don Swayzee shouted up to him, ignoring Javier Shivwits’s soothing hand motions. “You don’t have one real person who’s seen anything with more than two legs and two eyeballs around here, except for a few cows. What you’ve got is one anonymous website posting from someone who says she’s a particle physicist, whatever the hell that is. Now who the hell would that be?” He turned to the crowd and spread his arms. “Anyone know a physicist around here? Let alone a blond female particle horseback-riding physicist?” No one raised a hand. “Well then why the HELL are we looking to Mars or some other damn planet? We’ve got all the tentacles we need in Washington, and that’s where we should be looking for our answers. Meanwhile, if you want some evidence, let me draw your attention to the visitors in this crowd. And I’m not referring to the news media.” The two beefy strangers froze, feeling the eyes of the entire assembly on them and smiling uncomfortably at the stage as if waiting for the next act in a performance that had nothing to do with them.
“Yeah Don!” I heard amid a small storm of applause, in what sounded like Arnold Barns’s voice. I was hopeful that Don’s outburst would draw the crowd’s attention away from the folly my meddling had inspired. But Matt wasn’t about to back down.
“Folks,” he said, “it’s always more comfortable to think along the lines we’re used to, for me the same as you. I’m trying to open up your minds to a broader range of possibilities. And with all due respect to Don and Harold, we don’t need to give in to paranoid fantasies here. It’s true that the Federal government has locked up some of the land around here so we can’t hunt on it or drive off road, or build a Wal-Mart on it, but it’s a long way from that kind of interference to secret weapons and electronic surveillance. There might be some reason for testing weapons out here, although there are certainly better deserts even for that. But try to imagine why they’d be surveilling us. I can’t think of anything we’ve got here that would interest anyone in Washington, unless it’s the salmon mousse over at the PetroMall.
“Seriously,” he went on, his voice developing a somber tone, “I can understand your skepticism. It’s a huge mental leap for all of us. But there’s a lot of evidence, and it’s getting stronger all the time. The posting Don’s referring to is about as clear and as detailed as you could want. I admit the author of it isn’t willing to identify herself, for what I think are very good personal reasons, but to me her statement has the ring of truth about it.”
Finally mobilizing myself, I stood up and called out “Aren’t you worried about a hoax, Matt? What about the possibility that someone is just yanking your chain? You seem to be putting a lot of weight on that one report.”
“Tell me about it,” said Don Swayzee, disgustedly. But Matt was adamant.
“That posting is one of the soberest, most matter-of-fact reports on the whole website. I call your attention to her obvious fear that she won’t be believed, her reluctance to post at all. This woman is on the level, although I do think it’s possible she disguised her personal details to keep herself out of the limelight, which would explain why she doesn’t match the description of anyone we know.” He rushed ahead before the crowd could react. “Now, Don has pointed out that we have a couple of strangers in the crowd. I’m not going to speculate about who they are or where they’re from – I don’t consider it hospitable to put people who may be completely innocent visitors to our town on the spot in a public meeting. But just suppose Don is right and there actually are agents of the Federal government present. Is it very surprising that the government would be interested in the reports of strange celestial doings that are coming out of Mildred? Wouldn’t their presence in fact just be more evidence that something very strange really is happening here, something that can’t be explained in everyday terms? Why would they be here, if they already know what’s going on because they’re doing it themselves? And if the lights were only meteors or some other natural phenomenon, as some have proposed, the government would probably know that too, and wouldn’t be wasting taxpayer money sending out agents to investigate an everyday astronomical event.
“And finally, as Father MacGill has reminded us, in a sense it doesn’t matter which of us is right. Whatever the truth is, we need to take steps to get some hard evidence that’ll prove things one way or the other.”
This final statement left the audience quietly thoughtful. In the brief silence, Dave Bacco stood up, looking slight but professional in his freshly ironed sheriff’s uniform. “There’s one person we need to hear from before we get involved in a lot of time-consuming activities around this problem,” he said mildly. “I’m referring to Mr. Twombly.” He sat back down next to his beautiful wife and children. Dale Twombly looked to his right and then his left, as though seeking this Mr. Twombly that Dave had mentioned, then rose reluctantly from his chair and climbed slowly to the stage, with his organic hand tucked in a back pocket and the prosthetic one swinging free. He used the latter to pluck the wireless microphone from its stand on the podium and began to talk, stalking back and forth across the stage like a televangelist or a rock star.
“I’d like to set your minds at ease,” he told the audience. “I’d like to tell you that UFOny had nothing to do with the manifestations you all observed last Christmas Eve. Or some of you might even prefer to know that we were responsible. As you know, however, the stated mission of UFOny is both to shake up people’s assumptions about what constitutes reality and to force them to examine their evidence carefully before assigning causes to the sometimes puzzling phenomena of our everyday lives. You all know, or think you know, the kinds of things we do at UFOny, many of you have seen what you believe were examples of them, and in some cases concrete evidence of our activities – what some like to call hoaxes – has even been produced. Even in those cases, however, it has been our policy to make no statement one way or the other about our involvement, and we see no reason to change that policy now. In fact, we’d like to think that our past activities have helped to create both the atmosphere of open-mindedness about UFOs and other une
xplained phenomena and the hard-nosed skepticism that could lead to a meeting such as this one.” He stared challengingly out at his silent audience, then spun the microphone once like a Colt .45 in his titanium hand. “Any questions?”
Nobody spoke up.
Matt Matawan retrieved the microphone from Dale’s claw and said, “Well, I know we’d all like to thank Dale for the entertainment and the many happy hours of conversation he and his pals have provided for us over the last few years. But with all due respect, neither he nor anyone else on this earth has the kind of technology that could create the show we all saw on Christmas Eve. Although I have to admit, I did kind of wonder if I was seeing the point man in an alien invasion the first time Dale rode into town on that Harley,” he added, as Dale took his seat next to Myrtle Bench, smiling. “But now that I’ve seen some signs of the real thing, I know Dale’s just a unique human being.”
Taking the contemplative silence that followed Dale’s remarks as an indication that the crowd was satisfied and agreed with Matt’s call to action, Javier Shivwits seized the chance to exploit the atavistic authority of his position as principal. Within a few minutes he had organized volunteers from the audience into a dozen teams consisting of four or five members, each of which would regularly patrol a specific geographical area east of the town, with double patrols assigned to Devil’s Table. All teams were to report any unusual findings to Matt, who would post the material on the website in the form of a keyed map.
There was a surprising amount of enthusiasm for this project, although I noticed with some relief that a large fraction of the crowd were maintaining a neutral attitude and heading for the exits. But I saw Arnold Barns and his friends signing up for a team that was being headed by Madame Malesherbes, although their eagerness may have had something to do with the prospect of having Myrtle Bench as a teammate. Lu predictably signed up with Father MacGill’s squadron, and I reluctantly joined her, not wanting to be left on the outside, even though I still thought the whole thing was an enormous waste of time and effort. Don Swayzee and Harold Clare had collected a like-minded group in a corner of the gym, where they were already discussing in loud voices the weaponry they would pack on patrol and what sort of camouflage gear would be appropriate. The Cowboys were a little taken aback when the two beefy strangers, claiming to be tourists from Italy, asked in broken English to sign up with them. They grumbled but finally accepted, possibly feeling that it would be wise to have the two where they could keep an eye on them. Matt himself had undertaken perhaps the most delicate and critical task, that of uncovering the identity of the mysterious female equestrian particle physicist, so as not only to have a look at the site of her startling observation but also to judge, by interviewing her in person, the trustworthiness of the information she had provided. The meeting broke up into a swirl of chattering, milling small groups, all earnestly exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses and promising to send each other patrol schedules on spreadsheets. Everyone seemed very relieved and happy to be taking concrete steps to solve the mystery.
“I think it’s wonderful how so many people just came together on a plan of action,” said Lu, as we walked home through the cold and wind. I still had the baby carrier on my back, but she had Albert in his sling, sagging against her chest. I could barely make out the black beans of his eyes, below the blue polar fleece ski cap, gazing curiously into the dark. I supposed that to him darkness was just another interesting visual phenomenon, like a firework show. “It just shows you that people really do want to get along with each other, if you give them half a chance.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But what are they getting together about? I still can’t understand why you’re all so determined to find some profound significance in a couple of little dirt balls frying themselves up in the sky. If you want something strange to think about, think about how many million years those little specks have been wandering around out there in the dark, circling the sun with NOTHING HAPPENING. Nothing! Try to get your mind around that block of free time. Think of that silence! The incredible boredom. Millennium after millennium, and then they suddenly happen to run into the Earth on Christmas Eve and flare up for a few seconds, and everybody’s panties are in a knot. That’s a mystery, isn’t it?” In the cold and moonless night the Milky Way was a ragged highway, with the desert stars demonstrating brightly on both its shoulders. I thought, as I nearly always did when looking up at them, of their immense distance and solitude, even though they were, technically, our next-door neighbors. How was it possible – all this turbulence in Mildred, overflowing our consciousness, while all of that out there was so changeless and uninvolved? And what bizarre town meetings, completely unknown to us, were taking place on all those worlds? That seemed like more than enough mystery for our little brains.
“The important thing,” Lu said, “is that everybody’s pulling together, even if it’s only for a little while. It’s so hard to get people to be a community. Like getting those kids to play basketball as a team, instead of a bunch of freelancers. That’s really what church is about, too, as much as anything. We’re so much stronger and happier when we work together.”
“Yeah, think of the Nuremburg rallies,” I said. But she was making me feel like a grumbling old nay-saying crank.
A Burned-Over District Page 9
