Jonah

by Dana Redfield

  “You think Apple Valley is ready for the cosmic age?”

  “If it's not, maybe it will slide into the past.”

  “Sounds like we have a lot in common.” Her smile is unabashed.

  She flashed a big diamond on her left hand. Engaged, but she wouldn't say to whom. Jonah didn't press. Sometimes people in the Valley were secretive just to create intrigue.

  He left with a CD of John Denver's last live concert. God only knew why….

  Jonah's thoughts turn again to the hypnotic regression. According to Triss and Lulu, after his account of the actual abduction, everything else was “confabulation.” He made it up, they meant. No opinion from Zion…but that's another subject. Lulu told him she felt the events he reported after being in the spacecraft were probably “screen memories,” planted by the aliens to cover what really happened. Because alien abductees don't go to emerald mountains, or hang out with talking whales. Did it ever occur to her, the emerald mountain and the whale were real, and he confabulated the UFO?

  Maybe the talking whale part was something dredged from his subconscious—his obsession with the story of Old Jonah. But damn, he can't get that emerald mountain out of his mind now. Not much detail came out of the regression, and what he said did sound like a fairy tale, but if he were confabulating, it didn't stop after the session. He remembers swarthy-complected people who live in an emerald cave….

  A garden will be good for him. Help him ground. Never thought he'd have a thought like that. Him, so down to Earth. And then that thing he wrote Christmas night…

  He's never going to tell anyone.

  Pulling his Jeep Wrangler into the backyard, Francis Aloysius Swenson sees Rodin's The Thinker sitting on a tree stump. Jonah lifts his head. Neither man smiles.

  Frame called earlier to say he was interested in seeing J.Q.'s Trailer Park. The town was talking. Those who had nothing better to talk about. They could both pretend that Frame came to gather facts to compare to the rumors, or they might get honest with each other before the afternoon passes. Stranger things have happened in the history of humankind.

  Frame slams the door of the Wrangler and ambles over to the stump. His shoulders are hunched under a jean jacket lined with synthetic white wool. He studies Jonah with shrewd Scottish eyes. Jonah looks different to him—the beard, practically dressed up in corduroy slacks, windbreaker over a beige turtleneck. Frame is a couple of inches taller than Jonah and thinner. His hair is light brown, long on the neck but neat. He has the long brooding face of his father's Scandinavian lineage. Jonah sometimes calls him Ski Nose.

  After the small talk, Jonah leads Frame to the sites where they plan to install hookups for two mobile homes, plus tentative sites for two more.

  “I'm seeing four homes out here eventually.” He's watching Frame out of the corner of his eye. “Going to plant more trees….”

  “Never imagined you as a manager of a trailer park.” Frame bends down to examine a stone that looks like an arrowhead but is not. He tosses the white quartz chip and studies the sandy soil.

  “Won't be a business venture,” Jonah says. “That's just the front.”

  Frame looks up at him, squinting. A blade of sunlight is cutting through the dark blue clouds. The wind nips at their ears.

  “Heard you were forming some kind of cult out here.” Frame looks down to hide his grin. “You'll be moving in a bunch of hippies. Be hanging their children on the clothesline.”

  “Tell everyone it's the absolute truth. Tell them J.Q. is going to form a clan of like-minded souls, and we're going to have a band. Going to grow an organic garden, get some chickens, some sheep—learn to spin wool into clothes. Tell them J.Q. Mahoney is going to raise ostriches. And maybe get a dog. Might do some fishing down on the Colorado. Tell them alien spaceships regularly fly over, sometimes taking us up for rides…to a home away from home…an emerald mountain. The source of musical instruments.”

  “Sheep and ostriches?” Frame stands up, scrubs the dirt off his hands. “More permits.”

  “The Lord is on our side.” If he can't get Frame to nibble on the reference to aliens, maybe he can worry him Jo's Abode has gone extreme on Jesus.

  Frame grins. “Might want to contact Mary Magdalene. Have her dance for the planning commission. Or was that Salome?” He scratches his head.

  “Neither. You're thinking of Queen Nefertiti.”

  “It's a good thing we won't have to pass a history exam to get you those permits.”

  They walk. The land is no one's dream of an estate. Grass takes an enormous amount of water, and there are too few trees to cool off the fiery desert. But there are all kinds of desert foliage they can transplant; rig up a drip watering system. Jonah can see it, the trees, lush ground cover, alternating with artfully placed stones. And flowers, lots of them.

  He tells Frame about his plans for the garden. He hasn't mentioned any of this to the women yet. What if Triss is allergic to ostriches? Maybe Zion won't want to feed the chickens and collect eggs. Maybe the rooster will wake her up too early. He smiles. He's sure Coral will be jumping up and down to learn how to shear sheep, and spin.

  Sheep and chickens never crossed his mind until Frame showed up. This is how it's been lately, just like the thing he wrote Christmas night said would happen. He would just know what to do. But how can he trust thoughts that pop up like fish out of a pond?

  Frame stops. “I envy you, Jonah.”

  Jonah looks at him curiously. Frame's a success story. Movie stars fly out just to acquire paintings from the Whistler. Frame is in. And yet he managed to avoid the trappings of success—the phony life, he called it.

  “Sounds glamorous to you? Persuading this hard-bitten desert to grow food, stepping over sheep patties, plucking ostrich feathers, dressing like escapees out of some Zane Grey novel—what's to envy?”

  “I want to paint. Maybe do some woodwork.”

  “Paint? You mean, pictures?”

  Frame picks up a stone and throws it hard at a runt cedar tree. “I was an artist once.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Because I was ashamed.”

  Now Jonah understands the complaints from some of the artists. Frame was sometimes too controlling, had too much to say about the artwork. He was a frustrated artist!

  Frame is pacing, kicking at the dirt with his boots, dislodging rocks, rearranging dry weeds. “It's not an unusual story. It's all I wanted to do in high school, but I was the firstborn. I was supposed to set the example. Be something. I can't believe I rolled over so easily.”

  Jonah knows Frame set up the gallery with money he made when he was joint owner in his father's engineering business. After the old man croaked of a heart attack ten years ago, Frame sold out and moved to the Valley. Why didn't he take up painting then? Probably didn't want to starve. His mother was alive, lived in Salt Lake City near one of his sisters. Big Mormon family. Frame was a “jack Mormon,” a slider. But their religion was like skin. You could stop going to church, but once a Mormon, always a Mormon.

  “Same goes for artist,” Jonah says.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking about that old saw, ‘once a Mormon, always a Mormon.'” Jonah doesn't believe it, but it works for the point he wants to make. “If you're an artist, you're an artist, whether or not you do anything with it.”

  “That's the killer.”

  Jonah is scratching his head now. “I don't get the connection between your regrets as an artist and what I'm doing out here. It won't exactly be an art colony. Although, if an artist wanted to live out here in a mobile home, I guess we could consider it. And I'm sure we could find some wood for you to work.”

  Frame laughs. Takes off walking fast. Jonah has to trot to keep up with him.

  “It's a crazy idea. Sell that big gorgeous house of yours, hire someone to manage the gallery. And Laurie and the kids will probably divorce you.”

  “Damn straight. Laurie married an entrepreneur, not some bearded artist.”


  “Uh-huh, you envy my beard, too. I got news for you, Frame, you too can grow a beard. Just stop shaving.”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  Jonah is getting a workout, traveling beside long and skinny. Frame isn't even looking at the ground he came to inspect. He's trying to outwalk his thoughts. Jonah knows how that feels.

  “Seriously…what brought all this on?”

  “I'm sick of it. The whole stinking system. Taxes, computers, the lying media. Economic boom, my ass.” He throws his hand up like a kite. “Lowest unemployment in years? Yeah, right. Boom for the scavengers while we're working two and three jobs at minimum wage.”

  “You're not,” Jonah says.

  “Just a dollar away from it. I'm time poor. We small-business guys have to work twice as long to make half as much.”

  “Whoa…” Jonah stops him, grasps his shoulders. “I don't work full time. And we close up for the winter. Maybe you work long hours to forget you're not doing what you want to.”

  Frame throws off his hands, resumes walking.

  “Could be some truth to that, but don't tell me I'm wrong about the whole world going crazy. Maybe I work so I won't see it. We're manning up to colonize Mars, for chrissake. Destroying our own habitat, can hardly feed ourselves, and we're going to Mars?”

  “Can't conquer enough planets, not if you want to run the galaxy, Frame. Where's your plundering spirit?”

  “Left it on Uranus.”

  “Hey—chin up. The meek are going to inherit.”

  “Inherit what?”

  “Whatever little plot of land we toil over.”

  “Tell that to the hoards living in cardboard boxes!”

  Jonah has never heard Frame going off like this. What's got into him?

  “If I ever do take up painting, it'll have to be somewhere quiet.”

  “Oops. Going to be noisy around here. Remember, I said we're going to have a band. Strings, horns, drums, maybe a guest harmonica, maybe a solo bagpiper…”

  Frame laughs. “Yeah…serenade the chickens and sheep.”

  “Scientific studies show everything grows better to music.”

  “You're nuts.”

  “You envy that, too, don't you? I'm getting the picture now. You want to be J.Q. Mahoney. Who can blame you?”

  Frame walks off, shaking his head.

  “Hey—how about some coffee? And a cigar? Might have some brandy left over from Christmas….”

  Inside the house, Frame is heartless, ribbing him about the changes the women have made to the interior. A silky yellow tablecloth replaced the old plastic checkered thing, new yellow curtains over the kitchen windows, a vase of wild flowers in the center of the table, colorful throws over the rough furniture in the living room, little braided rugs on the floor. Not much new, really, but the place is awfully clean. Frame has no call to talk. His house is all frilled and doilied. But Jo's Abode is supposed to be the bastion of manhood. Place where a person can put his boots up on the table, spit in the sink, drink out of the milk carton, never wash the coffeepot. Freedom. Until a man wakes up one morning and notices there's a hole in his gut where the wind is blowing through.

  Jonah plunks a bent aluminum ashtray down on the kitchen table, fills two mugs with coffee, and the men light up cigars.

  “Cuban,” Frame says.

  “Don't know where Triss found them. Christmas present.”

  “Laurie would make me sleep outside with the dog if I smoked up the house while she was out shopping.”

  “I'm slow on getting the dog. Might be the last animal I add to the farm.” He blows a smoke ring. “Haven't heard any whimperings about smoke yet, but Zion can give you a look that makes you want to confess everything wrong you ever did, and beg for lashings.”

  “Mmm, kinky. Always thought there was a hard woman behind those blue eyes.”

  “Maybe it's unearthly strength.”

  “You would say that.”

  “It's wisdom to stand up for your landlady.”

  “Not to mention you're in love with the woman.”

  “Well, pine box me away, because she's not the least interested.” Jonah leans toward Frame, lifts his eyebrows, taps the cigar on the ashtray. “But I have a dilemma. She's my wife. Don't know how I'm going to break it to her.” He settles back, blows another smoke ring.

  “She doesn't strike me as one who would thrill at being dragged by her hair into a cave.”

  “Dead set against marriage, too. Maybe I'll have to take her name.” He slams a hand on the table. “That's it. We'll all be Roses. Whole damn clan. That's how we'll outwit the law. Otherwise, they'll be telling us who can live out here, who can't. But if we're all family…Yeah, it'll work.”

  “You are nuts, aren't you?”

  Frame didn't bite on the word “clan.” Frame's a wiggly fish.

  “Yup. Ever since those forty days off in LaLa Land.”

  Frame's face falls, elongating with a worrisome thought. Jonah knows something is eating on him. All that ranting about the system was just a diversion.

  “Have to tell you something, Jonah.”

  Jonah puffs on his cigar.

  “I saw a UFO.”

  “Ha!”

  “Don't gloat. It's so unbecoming.”

  “I think I deserve a moment of gloat. When did it happen? Tell Jonah all about it.”

  “In ‘92, a couple of months before you came. About two in the morning. No clouds, a billion stars. I was coming back from a trade show in Vegas. It was right on the highway, about fifteen miles off the interstate. Huge mother. Triangular. Pulsating lights. Flew over the car low and slow. Not a goddamn peep.”

  “How'd you know that? You stop and get out?”

  “Yes, I stopped the goddamned car,” he said as if confessing that besides murder, he stole, too.

  “You stopped it, or it was stopped?”

  “I don't know!”

  “Next minute, you're outside the car, you don't remember stopping it, or getting out.”

  “I know what it sounds like. Why do you think I never told anyone?”

  “Could have said you saw something, left the rest out. Could have made up quite a story. Like you did about Star Rock.”

  “I couldn't have been abducted. I would have remembered something.”

  “You check the time?”

  “Clock was broken, and I didn't check my watch.”

  “I can understand you never telling me.”

  “You were just out with it. Right up front.”

  “Some people would say that was foolish.”

  “Oh, hell, Jonah. You know you can tell me anything.” His face reddens. “Sorry I held back on you.”

  “You weren't living with Triss and Zion.”

  “What's that got to do with it?”

  “I don't have to experience the usual rejection in my own home. Triss and Zion know UFOs are real. I don't blame you for not saying anything. A man has to take care of himself.”

  Jonah gets up and takes a half-full fifth of brandy out of an upper cabinet, pours a dollop into each mug, plunks down the bottle, sits down himself.

  “Never thought we'd be talking like this,” Frame says.

  “Me, neither. What do you think the UFO thing means?”

  “I try not to think about it. Told myself it was one of ours. Something they made out at Area 51.”

  “Antigravity vehicle, sure. Did you think you imagined it?”

  “No. It was too real. I wasn't nodding off, nothing like that. It freaked me out.”

  “You never told anyone?”

  “I did. A tourist. One minute we're talking about Morse's landscapes, next he's mentioning a UFO. Can't remember why the subject changed.”

  “How'd you feel talking to him?”

  “Relieved. Like I wasn't the only man who ever jerked off.”

  “Frame—I'm shocked!”

  Frame pours more brandy in his mug, hands the bottle to Jonah. “So what do you think it means?”
<
br />   “Unlike you, it wasn't something I could drop,” Jonah says. “I've been thinking about it every day since I came home. All the stuff about UFOs flying over our military bases, you can make a case for ETs checking us out. When did we hear about the first ones? Right after we dropped the bomb. Where's Roswell? Right next to the military installation where the bomb was made. And there are stories all over the world—Belgium, England, Russia, China…. But the hybrid thing…that part gives me the deep creeps.”

  “Were you…did they…?”

  “Take my sperm? Don't think so. I think something a lot weirder is going on than the stories we hear about breeding hybrids.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like we're getting ready to make the big shift.”

  Frame gives him a totally disgusted look.

  “Let me bring it down to Earth. I was thinking…why don't we just start living like we always wanted to?”

  “What the hell else have we been doing?”

  “I dunno, Mr. Artist.”

  Frame pantomimes jerking a knife out of his neck.

  “Maybe your wanting to paint is just the surface, like UFOs are only a mask for whatever it is really coming down.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I'm asking what it is you want to paint.”

  “Just paint,” he says in a sullen tone.

  “I mean, what do you want to paint, in your heart of hearts.”

  Frame snorts, draws long on his cigar.

  “Can't be any cornier than me thinking we'll turn the Talk, the gallery and Hilde's store into the Cosmic Eye.”

  “God, Jonah. You're cracked.”

  “What's the matter with that?”

  “In Apple Valley?”

  “People here don't deserve a window on things to come?”

  “Deserve…they'll run us out of town.”

  “Who will?”

  “Get serious.”

  “Okay. It will take a lot of guts to start living by our hearts.”

  Frame sticks a finger down his throat and makes a retching noise. “It would be financially ruinous, and you know it.”

  “Maybe. So we ought to just keep marching in place.”

  “I have a family to take care of.”

  “I don't?”

  “You dream.”