The Truth About Martians Read online

  “Well, I’m sure not doing it.”

  I watch the light storm until each of the fiery flickers goes mostly all dark and the desert and the ranch and all the fields around us grow quiet again.

  Too quiet.

  Even the sloppy drops have stopped shearing the grasses and filling the puddles in the muddy drive, the cows have given up and gone back to sleep, and Momma has shushed and rocked just enough until both the sky and the baby have settled.

  All the lights have finally flickered out…except one.

  But it isn’t just any light.

  It’s…green.

  One single green beam.

  My fingers stay glued to the rain-soaked sill as I stare out the window, unable to breathe or move or speak, watching as the far-off green light glows dim and then bright, dim and then bright.

  Like an eyeball…blinking at me.

  Watching me like I’m watching it.

  Dibs slides his leathery feet across the floorboards again, until I feel him standing right behind me.

  “Will you look at that?” he whispers. “That’s a Martian ship sure as I’m standing here.”

  “You don’t know that,” I tell him. “We’re more likely under attack from the Russians than men from Mars.”

  I wipe a mixture of sloppy mist and sweat off my chin with the back of my hand and finally let in the air I didn’t realize my lungs were aching for. Outside the window, it smells like wet grass and smoke and something burnt up real bad.

  “Don’t even try and tell me that you’re not thinking the very same thing, Mylo, because I know you too well,” Dibs says. “Look at that thing out there.”

  Our stares stay fixed on that blinking green eyeball. Glowing dim and then bright. Dim and then bright.

  “There has to be another explanation for it,” I whisper into the darkness. “Maybe a meteorite or asteroid.”

  “Krypton burns like a green star in the endless heavens,” Dibs says in an announcer voice just like the narrator from The Adventures of Superman program that we listen to on the radio in the evening after supper.

  As he slides his bare feet back to the bed, I stay stuck on the sill, my head resting on my arm, watching the sky. Bright stars push and peek their way out between the dark, swirling storm clouds as the monsoon blows its way east. And I wonder which star is yours.

  Obie? I whisper to the night. Did you see it, too?

  July 5, 1947—6:15 a.m.

  Nightmares are dark and gray and deep and scary.

  They take all of you when you’re not even looking, until you’re sweating and running and praying to get away.

  And then you wake up.

  That’s when the nightmares are supposed to creep back into the dark crevices of the world with the rise of the sun. But sometimes…they stay.

  Even in the light.

  It’s not Martians that wake me the next morning. Or a space vessel blasting through the sky and crash-landing on Earth, either.

  It’s Jor-El McRoostershire the Third, crowing his morning wake-up song, that opens my eyelids, and it’s Momma’s churro hotcakes frying up in the pan downstairs that wake my stomach.

  Dibs is gone.

  He doesn’t need any rooster to wake him up. Birds, either. He has an automatic alarm clock inside his brain to make sure he gets up and off on time to do morning chores on his daddy’s farm, Butte Rise and Swine Pig and Poultry.

  Nothing different than every other single normal day.

  That nightmare of Martians landing out in the desert and blinking green eye is long gone with the sun and the normal noises of the yard down below my window.

  I stretch and yawn and rub my eyes awake with my knuckles. But when I look over to see if you’re up, too, all I see is an empty bed.

  The one with the blue quilt pulled straight and tight.

  And I remember that you’re gone all over again.

  I remember that even though nightmares are supposed to creep back into the dark crevices of the world with the rise of the sun…sometimes they stay.

  The billowing curtains lie still now, without even a hint of breeze to blow them. I stretch my neck to see out the window. The sun is already scorching the soggy earth back into dust and cracking the mud puddles dry again.

  The yard is alive with sound just like any other morning.

  Daddy’s tractor roars in the field.

  Chickens cluck and peck in the coop.

  Cows moan in the pasture.

  I pull Shortstop out from under my pillow and hug him close to me, breathing him in at the top of his head, between the ears where the fur has been loved almost clean off.

  The tiny bear smells of Obie’s freshly oiled leather catcher’s mitt and the dirt from the pitcher’s mound that we built together out back…but mostly of him.

  And of his courage.

  There’s no one braver.

  Not even the Man of Steel himself. Obie was a Man of Steel and then some.

  Shortstop looks back at me with his one good eye. The other hangs by a single thread. I know if that hanging eye could cry from missing Obie, it would cry real tears just like mine still do at night when I know no one else can see me.

  “I know you miss him, too,” I say, hugging Shortstop close. “Not as much as me, but a lot still, I bet.”

  I feel the tears.

  Pricking behind my eyes and clutching my throat.

  And then the gray.

  The deep dark gray that threatens to snatch me when I think too long about everything that happened.

  So I just keep running.

  To make sure it can’t ever catch me and swallow me whole.

  “Mylo!” Momma calls from the kitchen. “Time for breakfast!”

  Momma’s churro hotcakes smell like sweetness and vanilla and cinnamon and toasted oil from the skillet on the stove. And today there’s the smoky smell of bacon, too, making my stomach rumble. I take a deep breath in and stretch.

  “Mylo?” she calls again. “You up?”

  “Coming, Momma!” I holler back, peeling the white sheet off me and swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

  Martians.

  I shake my head in the safety of the light.

  If it were still night and Dibs were prattling on with his stories, he might still have me believing in his stupid theories about Martian mind control. Not because they think he’s a genius, though. I don’t think any Martian would care two hoots about harvesting a brain that only makes Cs in arithmetic.

  The absolute truth about Martians:

  They can’t really harvest brains (I’m pretty sure).

  Only God has the power to take a soul, and that’s the real truth of it.

  And this is the most true thing: there isn’t any such thing as Martians.

  Jor-El McRoostershire the Third is still crowing, Baby Kay is downstairs talking her goo-goo gibberish in her high chair, and our old springer spaniel, Clark Kent, is barking on the front porch.

  It’s a whole lot of nothing.

  Which is how it is in Corona, New Mexico. A whole lot of nothing.

  Until…there’s something.

  Help.

  I sit straight up in my bed.

  I stretch my neck out and look past the curtains.

  A word.

  Just one word.

  Help.

  It’s like a whisper and a scream all at once.

  I hold my breath still inside me and listen again.

  Daddy’s tractor putt-puttering.

  Chickens clucking.

  Baby Kay gibbering.

  I breathe out.

  Nothing.

  And then another something…

  Help.

  I scramble down out of the bed, m
y bare knees against the worn floorboards, and place my cheek against the cool surface, peering underneath the mattress.

  When I was a little kid you couldn’t have paid me a million dollars to do something like that. I used to think the Boogieman lived under there. And in the nighttime, he stalked children’s ankles, ready to strike for his nightly meal. So I’d hold it all night, even if I really had to go bad. But if it was an emergency, I would call to Obie and he would stand guard for me until I jumped safely back between the sheets.

  He wasn’t ever scared to stand up to the Boogieman.

  He was too brave for that, too.

  Of course, now I don’t believe in the Boogieman anymore. In the daytime I don’t. But when it’s dark, anything is possible.

  Obie’s catcher’s mitt with a baseball tucked inside it is still between the mattress and the box spring. The best way to break in a glove. He used to keep it under his mattress, but now I keep it under mine.

  Underneath the bed are one rusted pair of old metal roller skates, a chipped World War II model plane, an old tiddlywinks game with the cover missing, and a tangled mess of a Slinky that Baby Kay got her sticky fingers on and twisted up into a wiry knot.

  No monsters, though.

  If Dibs were here, he’d tell me a story about some kind of creature with the ability to go invisible and whisper and scream and hide in the depths of darkness under the bed ready to grab little boys’ feet on their way back from the bathroom.

  And if it were dark enough, I might just believe him.

  But not in the light.

  In the light it’s supposed to be safe.

  Help.

  I jolt up and scramble to the closet, flinging the door open. Obie’s clothes are still inside, mixed in with mine. Momma thinks I’ll grow into them by next year. His Yankees cap sits on the top shelf. The one we got when Daddy took us back to New York to visit Granddaddy Affinito in the Bronx and see a game at Yankee Stadium. We took the same Lexington line as Daddy did growing up, transferring at 125th. Obie and I had brought our gloves with us that day and prayed for a fly ball. But neither one of us caught one. After that, Obie always said he was going to be the next Yogi Berra.

  And he would have been, too.

  He was the best catcher I’ve ever known. He never missed a ball, even when I threw him a curve now and again when he wasn’t expecting one.

  I push the hangers aside and look beneath the folded T-shirts and piles of itchy winter sweaters on the shelves.

  Nothing.

  I stand still, holding all my breath inside me again, and listen real hard, waiting to hear it one more time.

  “Mylo!” Momma calls again. “Breakfast is ready!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” I call back.

  “Dibs is on his way up the drive,” she says. “No comic books until chores are done. And make sure you scrub all the way to Z with the bar of Ivory.”

  Before Obie got sick, Momma was happy if my hands saw plain old water after chores. But now there’s a bar of Ivory at every sink and even extras in the kitchen cabinet in case we run out. And she makes both me and Daddy scrub the whole entire alphabet before we can rinse.

  I can hear Dibs’s horse, True Belle, gallop up the long dirt drive out front, pounding her hooves deep in the dirt.

  Pound. Pound. Pound.

  Clark Kent barks from the front porch.

  Dibs’s daddy doesn’t seem to care to get what a growing boy needs to eat. Not since Dibs’s momma left two years ago, leaving nothing but a note. Dibs never told me what the note said, but I didn’t need to see it to know it was bad.

  Because she never came back.

  I grab my crumpled overalls from the floor, pulling the straps over my shoulders and fastening the bronze buckles to the bib. I lick my hand and try to rub some mud off the knees from yesterday’s chores. Just below my window, Clark Kent’s nails scrape against the porch floorboards as he scrambles down the front steps to meet up with Dibs.

  From underneath the sheet, I pull the crumpled Superman comic book that Daddy brought me from town and try to smooth the corners flat again. I read it three times by the light of the crashing sky last night after I crawled back under the white sheet and Dibs went back to sawing his logs. When I smooth out the creases, best I can, I pull the drawer open on the night table between our beds and carefully set the number forty-five issue on top of number forty-four, glancing at the stack of my homemade comics in the pile next to the Supermans.

  The very top one—

  THE DEFEAT OF THE MARTIAN SUPERVIRUS

  Volume Sixteen of

  THE AFFINITO BROTHERS’ SUPERHERO DUO

  COMIC BOOK SERIES

  —is still missing its ending.

  I push the drawer closed again and a metal picture frame on top wobbles. It’s the one of us smiling together in our matching caps and mitts that day at Yankee Stadium. Smiling like a couple of dummies who had no idea that bad things really happen.

  Like the endings to stories are always good ones.

  My throat starts to feel tight and my stomach twisted up and it feels like I’m slipping. Slipping into the gray. A deep dark place that always seems to be chasing me.

  Chasing me for one year, one month, and nine days.

  It lies in wait, ready to pull me in and never let me go. But I figure if I run fast enough, it won’t ever catch me.

  “Mylo!” Dibs calls from outside.

  I hear his bare feet hit the dirt on the drive and the sound of a rope being thrown over the wood post out front as he ties up True Belle to drink from the trough.

  “Mylo!”

  I push the curtains aside and shield my eyes from the hot sun already drying and cracking the mud puddles from last night.

  “What are you hollering about?” I call down to him.

  Dibs is standing just below my window, a deeply tanned hand shading his eyes as he squints up at me. He’s in his same baggy overalls ripped at the knees with no shirt, dirty bare feet, and the same old sweaty Yankees cap that he always wears backward on his head covering up his crooked blond buzz cut. The one I brought back for him when Daddy took us. He only takes it off in church, at meals, and when a lady’s present.

  “I’m hollering ’cause I seen it, that’s why!” he calls back, his bare, bony chest pumping up and down.

  Clark Kent lies at Dibs’s feet, his tongue dripping and his tail swinging up a dusty red cloud.

  “You saw what exactly?” I ask.

  Dibs hocks a thick, juicy loogie from way down deep and spits in the dirt. “That explosion! Out at Foster Ranch! I seen where it hit!”

  I stare down at him. “Military, right?”

  The screen door creaks open and Momma steps out onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron. “Dibs?” she asks. “I’ve got churro hotcakes ready. Is everything okay?”

  “Ma’am.” Dibs removes his cap for Momma and nods her a proper hello. “Yes, ma’am. I just seen something out at Foster Ranch this morning. Something crashed out that way. Last night. In the storm. Mac Brazel says he’s going to call out the fire department today to take care of things.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Momma says, and crosses herself.

  Momma always crosses herself when she says that.

  She shields her eyes with her palm and stares off in the direction of Foster Ranch and then out toward where Daddy is working in the field.

  “Well, you’d better leave it for them to handle. Have you had any breakfast at all yet today?” she asks.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dibs tells her. “Mrs. Brazel made Daddy and me chorizo and eggs early this morning, but with all this excitement, my stomach is hungry all over again.”

  Momma gives him a warm smile. “Come on in and get washed up,” she says, then calls up to me, “Hey, little man? You coming down? After
chores, I’ve got some fresh-baked jalapeño corn bread I need you to get over to Mordecai Lord’s place.”

  “Yes, Momma,” I answer.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Dibs says.

  “Not at all,” she says, letting the screen door bang behind her.

  “Do you know if she made the Mexican chocolate sauce to go on top?” Dibs calls up to me. “I mean, it’s good either way, but I love your momma’s Mexican chocolate sauce.”

  “So what was it that you think you saw out there?” I ask.

  “I told you it was a Martian ship last night, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that?” He lowers his voice.

  “So?”

  “So I was right,” he says.

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “How do you know?” he demands.

  “Because I know there isn’t any Martian ship sitting out there,” I say.

  “And how can you be so sure?” He puts his hands on his hips.

  “Because,” I tell him. “There isn’t any such thing as Martians.”

  He shrugs and heads toward the house. “Don’t believe me then,” he calls over his shoulder. “But if that isn’t a space ship from Mars crunched up in that field, I’ll eat it up without salt or pepper.”

  “Well, I hope you’re hungry.”

  July 5, 1947—6:40 a.m.

  I’m pretty sure God hates me.

  And I can prove it, too.

  As far as I see it, when He was drafting my human image up in Heaven, He left out some very important parts.

  Very important.

  Parts that most boys in my class already have (with the exception of Dibs, of course) and even one girl, too.

  Eunice Snodgrass.

  Maybe God hadn’t had His morning coffee yet or maybe it’s just a horrible joke for a good heavenly laugh. But my bet is…He just plain hates me.

  My missing parts, thanks to God:

  Not one single, solitary muscle yet.

  A bare-naked upper lip without even a hint of a wisp.

  And this is the biggest one—my courage part is missing.