“Last night. So much going on over here, and I'm feeling pretty scattered. Coral learned to play the violin. My Aunt Triss taught her. She used to be a concert violinist with one of those symphonies back East.”
The silence on the line is deafening.
“I'm sorry, Frame. It was out of my control. I can't believe I was gone for so long.”
“Where?”
“I don't know. Except I do have clear memory of…” he clears his throat, “of being on a spacecraft.”
Frame laughs.
“Jonah…”
“I'm here, Frame.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I think I'm okay.” Unbidden tears fill his eyes. He loosens his grip on the receiver and turns to face south, as if looking in another direction will stop the tears. It helps.
“You think you were abducted?”
“Remember all those times we laughed it up?” Frame is silent. “I'm not laughing now. Thought I should let you know.”
Another long silence. Jonah imagines he can hear the electric clock ticking.
“It makes a man think, Frame.”
“Last time I checked, my own thinker was in working order.”
“It makes you think differently. Makes me think there's something we can be we've never thought of. Like it's probably impossible for a tree to imagine being a human.”
“Trees are too smart to be human,” Frame says.
“Yeah, they'd rather be our paper and furniture.”
“That's real thoughty, Jonah.”
The sarcasm is as familiar as skin. But it feels to Jonah like he lost his skin.
“What are you going to do, Jonah?”
“Good question. Right now I feel like never leaving the house again. Like hiding out in the basement.”
“You're sounding psychological….”
“Maybe you'll be the first one to say I'm crazy.”
“I didn't mean that.”
“What did you mean?”
“You sound upset, that's all.”
“Emotionally unbalanced.”
“You're not making it any easier, accusing me of saying things I didn't say.”
“Well, maybe I should have gone to Abduction Manners School before I called you, so I would know how to behave correctly.”
“Dammit, Jonah, knock it off.”
“Maybe I shouldn't have called so soon after…but I thought Christmas…”
“Damn right you should have called. But you can't expect me to just…Come on, Jonah. How would you be if I—” He stops.
“You can't imagine it, can you?”
“No, I can't.”
“I couldn't either.”
“J.Q.…if your story is you got abducted by aliens, I'll give you the benefit of a doubt. Maybe with my ego, I can't stand to think I was wrong about you. But you're going to have to give me some time to get used to the idea.”
“I doubt no more time than it's going to take for me. First I have to decide if I'm crazy. Then I have to wonder if I'm the victim of some far-out government experiment. Then I have to wonder if I had some kind of weird epileptic seizure out there and crawled into a cave and hibernated. I'm not saying I was abducted. I'm just saying I remember seeing a spacecraft, then I have some vague images of being checked out on the craft.”
“You were gone for forty days, Jonah.”
“I can't explain it. I can't begin to explain it.”
The conversation limped to a close, with neither man mentioning getting together to talk more. Frame said, “Take care of yourself.” Sounded like he meant, get over the mental malady before you call again.
And his saying “…I can't stand to think I was wrong about you…” rings in Jonah's head. Not that he could be wrong about UFOs—just about him.
But he feels some of the weight has lifted. Let the chips fall where they may…. Something else is pressing on his mind—maybe an indication he is not as okay as he pretends. This obsession with the story of Jonah…Maybe a way of pushing out thoughts of what happened at Star Rock, or maybe it's to distract thoughts of Zion. But all day, he couldn't get the story off his mind. It wasn't like worrying about taxes or death…he wanted to dig into the story. He was even impatient for Christmas to be over with—historically his favorite day of the year—so he could come back here and study the Bible? Maybe he is crazy.
But he goes straight to it, sitting down in the chair, gathering up the Bible, his new silver pen, and a yellow legal pad he got out of the room he laughingly calls his home office. Zion had taken him up on his offer, he saw—she had set up her computer in there. A sign she means to stay….
The eagle feather she gave him he stuck in the cactus plant Triss gave him to replace the one that disappeared. Everything he's wearing, except for his underwear, is new—brown corduroy pants, sort of sissy, but okay, and a maroon shirt of soft fabric. Under his shirt is the necklace with the pink crystal, the pearl, the blue feather, and the amber piece that contains Coral's teeth? His feelings about the necklace are a confounding mix of deep discomfort, secretiveness, and peace. It's like the rose tattoo on his arm—somehow he feels incomplete without them. He doesn't want to think about it. He misses his boots. Doesn't like to think about that either….
He reads over the two-page story in the Bible about six times, without making a mark on the paper. Several things intrigue him about the story. People generally associate it with the man who got swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it, but the rest of the tale is seriously weird. Maybe Triss's insight was right on. Question wasn't, why is Jonah angry, but what's he going to do about it? Spend the rest of his life sniveling?
The last line of the story is the one that bothers him the most. God describes Nineveh as a city where people don't know their right from their left hands.
The thought that follows is so big, it almost blows his circuits. Dazed, he writes on the tablet: The children of Earth have swivel bases…we will swing to the right, we will swing to the left, we will disappear from sight.
Jonah feels a chill on his back, as if tapped by a ghost. Then out pours a whole prophecy, or a story, he doesn't know which. He's the tambourine giving himself over to an unseen hand shaking him, playing the pen across the pages, a message foreign and shocking to his mind—his own future.
When he is done—like a certain person whom he criticized recently for doing the same thing—he rips off the pages that contain the prophecy and slips them between the mattress and box springs.
Then he falls upon the bed to sleep on the terrible secret.
Chapter W (23)
Jonah believes Triss is right—the common story of abduction is only the surface of a bigger reality. But he can only study it here in this reality. The only story that comes close to his own is that of Travis Walton who was taken for five days in 1975. Happened in the mountains near a rural community in Arizona, similar to Apple Valley. But there the similarity ends. Six men witnessed the spacecraft that purportedly whisked Walton off planet, for an ordeal he could only remember by means of hypnotic regression.
After a good deal of coaxing from Aunt Triss, Jonah agreed to give hypnotic regression a try. Lulu Greystone was the facilitator; she wasn't a licensed hypnotherapist but claimed she was experienced, and had a gift for it. He said no to videotaping, yes to taping with audio cassette. Coral Kay spent the afternoon at the McNalleys.
It happened in Lulu's office in her mobile home, the windows draped, with one small lamp for illumination. Lapel microphone clipped to his collar, Jonah was stretched out on a trundle bed; Lulu perched on a secretarial chair beside him. It took about twenty minutes for Lulu to skillfully guide him into the deep state of restsome trance.
So far, so good, Triss had thought. She and Zion were camped on beanbag chairs in the hallway just outside the room where Lulu was conducting the session. The door was open enough for Triss to peer at her nephew when she wanted to see his face along with hearing him.
His experience o
n the spaceship fit the story most often reported by abductees. He was in the company of “grays” and a tall praying mantis kind. He experienced the usual invasive mental checkup with those big black eyes staring him down to his soul, then he was made to view hybrids and coming Earth changes. Triss thought Lulu did a little “leading” here, but to be fair, the story was so familiar by now, it would be hard to listen to an abductee with new ears. But in trying to get him to elaborate on why the aliens were creating hybrids, Lulu caused Jonah some frustration. “He doesn't know” Triss whispered to Zion.
When Lulu finally dropped the probe of the hybrid drama, Jonah's narrative took a bizarre turn.
A birdman came into the room, he said. That's when Zion became very interested. At the news of the birdman, she got a secret little smile that would disappear every time she caught Triss checking her out.
This birdman—sounded like a Nordic to Triss, until Jonah said he was grabbed up by a wing. Now, what were we talking about? An angel? Triss moaned. It was all going so well until this character with the wing, and then Jonah lapsed into a zone of forgetfulness that Lulu could not penetrate.
Finally, he said in stern voice, “The libraries are closed.”
Triss gasped, and stared at Zion, who hiked her shoulders, as if to say she sure didn't know what was going on.
Lulu didn't miss a beat. “After your studies in the libraries, describe the next significant event.”
“Purple silk pajamas…” He wrinkled his nose. “A bird shit on me.”
Triss covered her mouth with both hands to keep from laughing. Everyone's experience was unique, but this was absurd! The place he described visiting was an emerald cave. The beings he encountered sounded like Alien Ethiopians, except he didn't describe them as aliens…they seemed more like cousins to us, living just over the hill.
Triss caught Zion's secret smile again, but what did it mean? She found his story delightful, or she knew what he was talking about? Did Jonah visit Zion's home planet? Triss's eyes were getting a workout, darting from Zion to the crack in the door, as she tried to concentrate on Jonah's every word. Her ears perked up when he mentioned musical instruments. He saw stringed instruments, drums, horns—all deep inside the emerald cave.
“Did Mehuki play an instrument for you?” Lulu asked him.
“Music your only hope….” he said laconically.
“Where is the boy, Izn?”
“There…” is all Jonah said.
Lulu fished, got him to talk about going down some kind of well in a tree; then he was down in a tunnel, in black water.
He encountered a talking whale!
“Oh, no…” Triss slumped in the beanbag chair. Jonah's psyche was a mess! A whale talking about music. Triss felt depressed when he next told Lulu he saw Thunderpaws. Chuckling, he said Thunder tricked him into jumping off a cliff…into the land of doubles?
Triss almost felt as bad as someone who has just heard the patient won't recover from a serious surgical operation, but Zion looked as pleased as lemonade on a hot day. Because she's in love with him, Triss was thinking. Not that she acted openly in love with him. Her hard-to-get game was down to such a fine art, Triss worried Jonah wouldn't “show her his dance.” Some men, you have to spell it out for them in ABCs. She was afraid that for all his bluster, Jonah was a shy man. What else explained the dance of avoidance going on between those two? Zion waiting for him to show he wants her, him waiting for her—watching them drove Triss half wacky. She was doing her best not to butt in, but by Saint Valentine's Day, if nothing changed, she might have to take extreme measures….
Jonah's journey in the “land of doubles” wasn't pleasant. He cried and babbled incoherently. Something about some man who seemed to be pursuing him. Maybe they should have gone to Phoenix or Los Angeles to a professional hypnotherapist. Lulu was patting his hand, for heaven's sake. Could she soothe him out of a complete psychic break? Triss was about to go in and put an end to his torment, when he became peaceful.
Not one word of the session recorded on the tape. Triss was miffed, like old fussy Fred was, discovering that photos are not considered to be evidence of the existence of alien spaceships. But it was nothing new. Not the first time electronic equipment had gone haywire in these kinds of circumstances. Just as well. Jonah's account wasn't going to be included in the annals of correct UFO lore. His story was way out there in star clusters beyond the Milky Way. Triss knew her nephew wasn't nuts…he just fell into the trap of confabulation, and Lulu wasn't experienced enough to stop it.
So much for hypnotic regression.
Saturday, January 30 is a cold day; the wind bites. Clouds the color of Zion's eyes blanket the sky. Jonah is outdoors, sitting on the tree stump where Zion sat the day he brought lawn chairs out of the tool shed and they had their tête-à-tête. He remembers almost nothing of what they talked about; he only remembers how he felt. Such a beautiful woman with such a confusing biography. And now here he is, sitting on the same stump with a story as bewildering—his own.
Never mind all that. Today he's going to be put to the test. Frame is coming over.
Jonah is looking forward to it. He misses Frame. But he knew to give him space. Turned out, Jonah had needed to be alone a lot himself since his forty-day trek into the Unknown. He discovered Henry David Thoreau's secret: Solitude is the best companion. But he isn't cut out to be a monk or a hermit. And the stuff that practically wrote itself Christmas night doesn't cast him in the role of a loner. He's a clanner.…
Jonah feels peaceful, sitting on the stump, thinking. Triss, Zion, and Coral are gone to Grand Junction, Colorado, to shop and go to a movie. Funny, Frame just happened to call on the first day Jonah has been alone since Triss and Zion moved to Jo's Abode. Maybe Triss is right—there are no coincidences.
Triss said she thought the hypnotic regression was a bust. Funny, Jonah muses, how quick we are to form opinions about something as vastly unknown as the phenomenon we call alien abduction. Recalling snatches of his journey, he sometimes broke out in a big smile. Then he would remember how serious and scary the whole business was….
A thought inserts from left field: Why not create a place where joy can run free and express like a healthy child? Reminds him of the prophecy, or whatever it was, he wrote Christmas night. He remembers writing it a couple of days after that, remembers sticking it under the mattress, like some split personality, right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. The thing clearly wasn't his words. That upset him so much he burned the pages in the fireplace. Now he wishes he hadn't been so reactionary. Why didn't he show it to Zion? Afraid she would laugh at him…
He stands up and walks over the ground that used to be a garden. And would be again, this spring. He can't wait to plant…tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, carrots, peppers, peas, corn, strawberries…maybe rose bushes.
Lately he's been thinking about his childhood days on the farm. He was so unfit for farming it almost ruined his relationship with his father. He had worked hard, but he just didn't have the knack. Anthony was the one his dad had pinned his hopes on, but Tony got mixed up with a woman, chased her to New York. Next thing they knew, he was working for an oil-and-gas outfit that transferred him to Saudi Arabia. Then poof. No more Anthony. He wrote for a while, then some political situation came up, and they lost contact. It was awful for his mother, and not easy for him and his father. But over the years they had to accept it…Anthony was dead.
But you don't have to be a farmer to make a garden productive, Jonah thinks, kicking at dirt clods, kicking thoughts of his family out of his mind.
He's interested in organic gardening now—bought a book on it. And he's been thinking about turning the Coffee Talk into a bookstore. Hire someone to manage it. Retreat from the front lines of business. Become an organic gardener, and full-time manager of the “estate.” Maybe he'll look into raising ostriches. Highprotein meat, low in cholesterol, and there's a growing market for it. And maybe they need to become self-sustaining….<
br />
January had been mostly like he told Frame it would be—he had felt like hiding out. But he had ventured into a town a couple of times. He had stopped by the Talk and saw that Triss had done a good job of battening down the hatches while he was off in Fairyland.
Sitting alone inside his shop, he had been unable to picture himself doing it anymore—coming down here selling coffee, and spouting his views. He was a tambourine man, now….
He had been guilty of making sure Frame was not in the gallery when he had gone to the triplex. But he did stop next door to visit with Hilde. A small test to see if she noticed any difference in him since his “vision quest.” That's when he was bowled over by something like inspiration. He could see the whole triplex converted into one store—”The Cosmic Eye,” or “Desert Lights”—too New Age for his mind to accept outright, standing there, talking to Hilde.
He vividly recalls his visit with Hilde.
She is a slender, petite woman, about thirty years old. Short blond hair, ears studded with tiny jewels, big round blue eyes. Girlish and sophisticated at the same time, she's wearing a slinky dress that emphasizes her boyish figure.
Deep Forest music is blaring, shaking the beaded window treatments. Hilde turns the music down, greets Jonah like an old friend. She raises up on ballerina toes, hugs him, pecks his cheek. She smells like vanilla.
“Our mountain man returneth!” She sparkles. “Want some java? It's pretty thick, but I can brew some fresh.”
He declines, feels awkward. Hilde leans against the counter and eyes him, waiting for him to reveal the reason he came in. He doesn't know why. But his mouth seems to have a mind of its own.
“Ever think of expanding?” He thumbs through a rack of CDs.
“Stuffed to the brim as it is.” Her look is questioning. Any more stupid questions?
“I mean a different concept.”
“Such as?” She's quick.
“Big store. Music, books, paintings…”
“And photos of auras?”
She's too quick.
“Funny you should mention it,” he says.
Jonah Page 26
