ALTERNATIVES

          Gina’s new dorm mate had golden skin and eyes like emeralds. Her name was Karfa. She was extraordinarily good-natured and kind. Her good nature communicated itself through Gina, until she began to act the same as her. Always seen together, avoiding the other students, sitting quietly, talking. They were interested each in how the other lived and what past experience they could draw upon to cast relevance in the present.
          The one of golden skin’s eyes sparkled when Gina shared tidbits about her own upbringing, where even mundane things could become objects of lengthy conversation. She had enjoyed a high middle-class childhood, with all its privileges, parented by two nurturing, protective, civil servants, who had married in near middle age. They were social activists, in that they contributed to just causes, so long as none of it clashed with earning their livelihood. Gina remained apolitical throughout her young life, being a dreamer and an artist.
          As for her friend, Karfa had immigrated from a foreign land, before émigrés were forbidden, and she had escaped the purges of recent months. Her tales of adventurous travels and of an exotic homeland fascinated Gina. She had never heard of such places. When she tried to look them up on a search engine, she was always confounded. But, she chalked it up to a dearth of information and consequently felt no concern.
          When classes were due for a summer break, Karfa invited Gina to spend the weeks with her family, as they journeyed home, to visit friends and relatives. Gina fretted that she may not have time to get a passport. She was told she would not need one to travel to the homeland. They were not required in that land, plus the fact the family’s mode of transportation bypasses normal means of leaving and entering any country. Gina did not fully understand, but, Karfa would never lie to her.
          Gina was home with her parents for a week.
          The day they were set to leave, both Mommy and Daddy pressed money in her hand and cautioned her to keep her phone charged. Gina always carried the latest technology, but her parents still referred to it as a “phone.” She hugged them, when they heard the automobile, then slipped outside with her bag to meet them.
          She had seen the car before. It was a make unfamiliar, of a body style to conjure planes and rockets. The inside was heavily padded. She and Karfa could fit comfortably in a wide back seat.
          Karfa’s Dad’s face was huge, his eyes deep-set and green. His overgenerous mouth smiled in a welcoming manner, as her Mom said a gentle “Hi.” The Mom seemed frail. Her skin tone not so gold as that of her husband and daughter.
          Gina just knew they would get along well.
          She could see her parents, peeking out the door, as they took off. Still the protective ones, if letting her grow. She mentally hugged them, more.
          The travelers entered the freeway, pointed north, away from town, running beneath a bright sky, with greenery spread over the low hills, the cars in seeming racing packs. Karfa’s parents, Arlor and Ola, were musical people. They enjoyed singing as they drove. Their favorite songs were the gentle, socially conscious ones, such as Louis Armstrong’s version of “What a Wonderful World,” and Cat Steven’s “Morning Has Broken.” Gina was thrilled to take in the concert, nestled in luxurious comfort, sharing warm feelings with the whole family.
          For the first leg of the trip, Gina nestled and listened. After the singing ended, she took notice of her surroundings. Dad Arlor, she discovered, was not driving at all. The car was self-operating and it had a voice to communicate with Arlor to provide information and a device to receive a designated person’s instructions. Not entirely original, but a new experience for her.
          About forty-five minutes since leaving home, the car made a turn onto a smaller road. The road led them up a steep incline and abruptly ended. Gina just knew they would have to turn back. Instead, the car accelerated and almost instantly left the solid Earth behind. “I always enjoy that sudden thrust,” Dad Arlor grinned, the remark aimed at Gina.
          “Where are we flying to?” Gina gathered enough wit to say.
          “Didn’t Karfa explain it to you?” he replied. “And, by the way, we are not flying. It’s a celestial highway. Only the initiate knows how to use it.
          “Our homeland is not of the Earth. You see, the highway leads us to a hub, a gateway to the other dimensions. Our family’s origin is a beautiful land, known as (word untranslatable). You will love to visit this land.”
          Gina wanted to believe and be relaxed, but fear had wormed its way deep inside her. She knew hysteria to be a few increments away, as the car leveled off and approached the hub. There was a man seemingly walking on the sky, hailing Arlor, who pulled up and put his window down.
          After exchanging pleasantries in an unknown to Gina language, the man explained something to Arlor, which he explained to Gina. “There is a glitch in the distributor unit and we will have to wait about twenty minutes until it is taken care of. There is a waiting facility within the hub. We can have refreshments, stretch our legs and the like.”
          They left the car and were ushered inside the hub, which Gina had found to be invisible until they went inside. She had to shut her eyes for the walk over there.
          It was a huge facility, much like Grand Central Station, in New York, with cars lined up inside. She understood that Arlor had parked outside, due to space limitations.    All used the facilities and later met at a food bar.
          “Have I time to show Gina around?” Karfa wondered, addressing her mother.
          She took her friend’s hand and they examined the gift shops, as well as businesses offering necessities, to be carried into specified dimensions, where one would be in trouble, or at least embarrassed, without them. They lingered for an hour until a musical sound gave the signal: System Repaired.
          By the time the interrupted travelers reclaimed their car, the lines within the hub were moving, at a rapid pace. Each driver swiped a card and proceeded into the tube, to be channeled off to the appropriate dimension. Dad Arlor, card in hand, drove up to the machine and properly ran his card. It was a matter of fact transaction, after more than twenty-five years of making journeys from his second home on Earth and the ancestral land he sought now to return to.
          In the first indication something was going wrong, Arlor expected to be shunted to the left, but instead, the car did a hard right. A black curtain seemed to cover the dimension before them and right away it was almost too late to avoid going there. “Get out of the car. Run for it,” Arlor shouted.
          The entire family fled the car. Gina was clumsy about getting free.
          As the portal behind began shutting the petals over the opening, the family scrambled back through to the Earthside. Gina tried, reached out for Karfa’s outstretched hand, until a petal brushed the hand away, leaving Gina to scream out Karfa’s name as the last probability of escape quickly vanished. She turned a terrified eye on the black sweeping in around her and fought her way back into the car.
          The precocious car announced, “New driver. Language: English. Please stand by.”
          “What shall I do?” Gina implored.
          The car repeated the last message. It conceded to her a frugal cab light, but nothing more. As she huddled in abject terror, the silence and the darkness seemed more oppressive by the moment. She was startled when the car began speaking again.
          “No one is coming to the rescue. You are Gina Griffin. You have been granted the right to drive me. I haven’t the data to analyze this environment. There is no road and it will be strictly guesswork when we finally move. There almost has to be carbon-based life forms here, because the air is good clean quality. Whether it is to be benevolent or dangerous, time will tell. Would you like to rest here and start driving later? Are you rested enough to go exploring?”
          “I think exploring. I’m too frightened to sit and do nothing.”
          The car energized itself. The exterior lights went on and the cab light died. The headlamps cut but a short distance into the heavy blackness. Gina determined there were bluffs and stones. It appeared there could be no place to go. The car inched around, backing and turning at times. “Stones are sharp,” it said. “Putting dangerous pressure on the tires.”
          The hours passed. They were getting nowhere. Against her will, Gina slept. At one point, she became aware the car was bouncing, shaking, almost careening downhill. But she did not fully awaken. After that, the ride became smooth. When she awakened, the dark had not lifted. The car had been sitting for some time, waiting to share information and to receive instructions.
          “We are at a cross point. The terrain is smooth. There is no indication of a road or of sentient life. We may freely travel in any direction at all. Which way do you choose?”
          “Any way but back where we started,” Gina supposed.
          “And that way is -?”
          “Just go the way we are pointed,” she said, finally.
          The darkness so crowded in on her she felt she was breathing darkness. It was demoralizing to the point she knew herself as wilting, about to give up. She would never see her parents again or have wonderful conversations with Karfa. What was the use of trying? Her eyes brimmed with tears.
          Then, a crack in the black of the night appeared, just at the horizon.
          It was a brilliant blue-white that slowly grew as the car made its trek across the flat soil. After twenty minutes, a sun burst upon the arc of the planet, its light sweeping before it in an instant glow and sudden heat. The car turned on the air conditioning.
          “I detect a forest, to the left a bit. If I may I will direct our course to it.”
          “Yes,” she agreed.
          With increased speed the car sought and then approached the forest. It stalled, needing to analyze the strange growth and the sprinkling of creatures in flight through the trees. After a lengthy pause, it announced, “There are a few growths poisonous to Earth beings in there. The winged animals moved away before a complete analysis could be enacted. They appear to be warm-blooded. Intelligent? Dangerous? I don’t know. I recommend we skirt the forest to check what’s on the other side, or beyond, even.”
          “I will follow your recommendations,” she said. “What else can I do?”
          “You have chosen the wiser course,” the car assured her.
          The forest at one point towered higher than the tallest Earth trees. They were cruising around the bulge it presented in their pathway, when a hippopotamus sized animal swooped overhead, screeching like an eagle with a sore throat. It soared above the treetops, then again swooped and was hidden within the heavy foliage. After a tour lasting three hours, the car left the forest to follow a deep gash in the soil that had plants similar to grass along its inner sides. The car explained that the gash pointed to a valley with some form of life, though it had no clue if that meant good news or bad.
          The car eased up to the valley rim, analyzing. “The life below is a mixed flora/fauna and I detect some sort of social structure. Whether it is an antlike structure, dog-like or human, I cannot say. Do you wish to go in and see how we are received?”
          Gina’s very protoplasm cried, No,” but in the end, she realized she would have to make contact at some point, as a matter of survival. “Let’s go in,” she said.
          “One suggestion, before we do,” the car advised. “Take the small black device that is plugged into the dashboard. Pin it on your shirt. The device will allow you to communicate with me and it will allow you to understand most forms of language and it will translate your speech to others.”
          She gratefully made the transfer of the box from the dashboard to her shirt. Now she did not feel totally defenseless.
          The car eased into the bowl that was the valley, its brain prepared to turn and flee at the first sign of danger. The stems and leaves that brushed near her window were not so strange to Gina; just a bit different. She strained her eyes to see beyond some low trees that obstructed her view. And then there appeared a rooftop, a conical thatched roof. The car wove a path in that direction. It was a silent car. No residents of the valley had likely been alerted, by the time they stopped, right outside a long, low building that Gina characterized as a bungalow.
          Gina stared intently at the building, unable to detect any movement.
          “Get out and approach? Or leave?” the car suggested.
          “I was sort of hoping somebody would have a peek to see what’s out here,” she replied. “I have never been so afraid.”
          Then she thought of something. “Blow the horn,” she said.
          Toot toot.
          The car’s timid toots produced no reaction.
          “Lay on it,” Gina insisted.
          This time the horn startled the life among the tree branches, causing bird-sized critters to fill the sky, as they sought to distance themselves from the monster producing the horrendous sound. A face poked out the door and quickly vanished back inside. At least Gina assumed it to be a face. It was as black as had been the night, and it vanished too quickly to study for any discernable features.
          Gina’s uncertainty increased. “Maybe we should travel on,” she suggested.
          “Is that a decision or a question?” the car asked, to be clear.
          “I don’t know. I guess we should wait and see if they come outside, to be sure if they are friendly or not.”
          The car cut the air conditioning. “For a reason I have not yet discovered, the temperature has moderated, here.”
           It quickly became clear why the heat diminished. Dusk was rapidly gaining on them. “Is the day here shorter than night?” she asked the car.
          “It is,” was the answer. “The planet and its sun do not appear to be in synch.”
           “We should probably move away from here to spend the night. Do you think we can find a safer place I can sleep?”
          As the woman and car debated the next action, the darkness encroached rapidly. In the heavy darkness the house inhabitants, unnoticed, came outside. Only because their eyes glowed, Gina noticed them at all. They moved erratically about the car so that the eyes gave an appearance much like a swarm of fireflies. Their blackness and failure to be still made it impossible to gauge their features.
          “What are they? Are they dangerous?” she said, her voice edging toward hysteria.
          “I do not know how to classify them,” the machine responded. “Because they are an unmeasured carbon-based life form they are potentially dangerous. Only experience can sort it out. They apparently hide from the light, which may be why they would not come outside when I honked. Do you wish me to leave here?”
          “Yes. I don’t think I can deal with them.”
          The instant the car showed a sign of movement, the creatures fell back. Then they surged forward, grabbing at and slapping the doors and windows. The car slowly gathered speed, seeking to get away without causing injury. They were not runners; consequently, all were quickly outdistanced.
          Coming out of the valley, the car requested to keep searching during the night. That way, Gina would be able to sleep as the need overtook her, but the goal of locating a sympathetic situation would be furthered, simultaneously. “Would you like some light, or do you prefer the darkness?”
          “A little overhead light, please. Just to comfort me. I don’t want to see out of the car, just now. There are too many frightening things out there,” she said.
          Plying the night, like a nocturnal beast, the stalwart vehicle broke through in the late night to a land that was cultivated and had villages and towns. By the time Gina roused from her sleep, they were paused on a road that mirrored rural America.
          She prowled through Karfa and her parents’ belongings until there turned up some candy bars and bags of chips. The candy she unwrapped was embedded with salted peanuts. It temporarily satisfied the hunger but increased the thirst. “Go to the nearest habitation,” she instructed. “I’ve got to have some water.”
          They came on a house made of piled stones, its general structure like what in the western states would be called ranch house design. There was a great old tractor by a field and a red truck parked by the house. Gina guessed the farmer to be hiding from the intense heat of the day. She instructed the car to turn in and pull up close.
          “It looks so friendly,” she said cheered somewhat. “I am going to get out and knock.”
          “Data showing now that the plants in the field affect your perception. Simply put: You will see what you wish to see, around here. You have an option to drive on.”
          In her eagerness for something normal at last, the girl dismissed the car’s words. Here there should be comfort. There should be food and water. Her steps took her to a wide door, with glass to look through, beyond a lace curtain, which had been pulled to the side. Desperation pushed her to rap loudly on it and wait expectantly.
          The face of a grandfatherly man appeared through the now opened door. “Yes?” he said, with a kindly smile.
          “Please, I am lost and alone. I don’t have anyone to turn to for help.” She did not sound pathetic, but, rather, hopeful.
          “Come in, young woman. So sorry for your trouble. Come into the house and wait, while I get my wife from the kitchen.” He paused, looking back from his traipse to the kitchen. “Would you like anything? A drink, or food, maybe?”
          “Oh, yes. I am so thirsty and hungry.”
          “Come into the kitchen, then, and we shall fix up a nice meal.”
          “Thank you,” she said humbly.
          She followed him until they came into a room where the man’s wife had just taken a roast from the oven. It was a fine cut of meat, filling the kitchen with a smell much like leg of lamb. She placed the roast on a rack to cool, before turning in surprise at the presence of a stranger inside her home. She regarded Gina with a blank stare for a moment, before her heart seemingly melted, and her demeanor became welcoming and warm.
          “This is Abigail,” the man said. “My wife of forty years. I am John. And what’s your name?”
          She gave them her name and they had Gina sit at the table, with a tall glass of ice water and a pitcher for refills. The old couple watched eagerly as she downed the entire glassful. Abigail poured her a second glass from the pitcher. “Now, you just wait. Granny’s going to fix you up a plate like you’ve never had before.”
          John and Abigail hovered as Gina devoured a huge meal and sat back, sated and stuffed. She looked up from the empty plate and gave them a heartfelt “Thank you.”
          It was plain to see she needed a spot to lie down and recover. They put her in a room with a high mattress and fluffy covers. She lay with her head on a soft pillow and quickly fell asleep.
          She awakened, feeling grateful and relieved to be where life could have a semblance of normalcy, although she would ever be haunted by the loss of family and friends, and Earth itself. She showered and tidied herself, then went out to see if John and Abigail were about. She met John as he came in from outside chores.
          “Good. You are awake,” he said, as he hung a beaten old hat on a hook by the door. “As I understand, you are without a home to go to. I’ve had a conversation with Abigail, and she agrees with me. You have a home, right here, if you agree to stay.”
          “Oh, thank you, sir. You can’t know how relieved, how grateful I am.”
          “You will agree to be assigned chores, to pay for your upkeep, I told her,” he added.
          “I certainly will. Enthusiastically,” she gushed.
          “While Granny is preparing your breakfast, I would like to show you around, outside.”
          John walked Gina outside of the house, to where a great cage imprisoned hundreds of flying creatures. They were half the size of hummingbirds. She could not decide if they were birds, insects, or, something else.
          “They are wumbles,” he informed her, exhibiting a great deal of pride. “They multiply rapidly. I sell most and make a good profit by them.”
          He lifted back the lid from a bin. “Here is their food. All you have to do is take out five scoops and send it down this chute.” He demonstrated the action by feeding the wumbles himself.
          The critters screeched like demons, attacking their breakfast, devouring it all in a mere two minutes. “They need their food two times per day.”
          He demonstrated how the cage bottom slid on rollers, to be rolled out and cleaned. It was an automatic procedure, once initiated by the rolling out by Gina.
          “Your one other task will be to let out the Carrses to run. They will make a mad scramble to the end of the track and come walking back. Then you just lock the gate again.”
          He showed her the Carrses, which were twenty-pound furry animals with doe eyes and snouts like pigs. He opened up the gate. The animals made their run and came panting back, docile and ready to get locked in. “You won’t have to feed them, because there is a pasture on the other end.”
          Gina gratefully acknowledged her tasks, vowing to be faithful to the duties and eager to be of help in any other ways she could.
          As she devoured breakfast, she thought it strange that her benefactors had not joined her in any meals. She did not question their right to leave her alone to eat. Varying cultures can have taboos and customs their guests don’t understand.
          Abigail took away the dishes, telling Gina as she gathered them, “Don’t worry about these. My great joy is taking care of this home. My day would be ruined if I could not do everything in it.”
          “But, I just thought -”
          “Nonsense, dear. You just let Granny handle it.”
          In fact, the couple seemed always busy, out sight, to the point life quickly became boring and pointless.
          One day a carrs came straggling after the rest were already moving on to the pasture in the back. Gina opened the gate and approached it, with her arms outstretched. It immediately pegged her as a friend and ally and ran to her. It felt as soft as a teddy bear. Its soft hands clutched her fingers. They snuggled and played until Gina realized she was neglecting to feed the wumbles.
           She pushed the disappointed carrs inside the gate and hurried to the wumble cage.
          After two weeks on the farm, the effect of the plant causing Gina to see what she wished to see began to wear thinner. She caught occasional glimpses of John and Abigail as they really were. It was as brief as a few seconds, mostly. One morning, she glimpsed “Granny” and “Grandpa” through a partially opened door. She beheld their great skulls and massive jawbones as they enjoyed a leisurely meal. Granny folded back the wings of living wumbles and pushed them down her throat. Grandpa bit chunks from the buttock of a living carrs. The animals squealed horribly. Then, like switching of TV channels, the scene reverted to a kindly couple dining on a humdrum fare.
          This final straw sent her into the confines of the car, where she asked it to take her away from the place. The car answered her, saying, “I have wandered on this planet in recent days, in search of a place for you to live with some dignity. For better or worse, this farm most meets your needs, of all the situations I visited. You are advised by me to remain right here. You are the driver, however. The choice is yours alone to make.”
          Gina sighed. She even cried a little. At last, she acquiesced. “All right,” she agreed. “But you will keep on searching?”
          “Now I have delivered you to your destination. I ask your release. As I belong to someone else, I am bound to seek him out. It is my notion to return to our point of entry in this universe and to seek a way back. Should I make the discovery, I will do my utmost to see you are saved. Don’t be optimistic. At this point, I have no clue.”
          There was a pause.
          “Am I released?”
          Gina hugged the steering wheel. “Of course,” she said, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
          The girl watched the car go. When it was gone, she returned to the farmhouse, done with her chores for the day.       
           

         
           
         
         
                   

THE TWEKIAN

                                               FOREWORD


          “Any port in a storm -” an Earthling’s saying, regarding ships at sea. On this day, a Twekian crew viewed the planet Earth in the same light; for their wounded ship had plied another kind of sea: intergalactic space. They so regarded our planet, until the vessel exploded. Just one Twekian managed to survive. Propelled through the atmosphere, in a shiny escape pod, the creature managed to land in an earthly wood, just a few miles outside the American backwater settlement of Gus’s Crossing.

                                           THE TWEKIAN

          Arliss Broom knew for a long time he would have an extraterrestrial for his very own best friend, just as the youngsters in his favorite movies had theirs. From age four to his present age of twelve, he had steeped himself in alien lore and saw pertinent movies dozens of times apiece. When he looked out his window, on the night of the Twekians’ tragic accident, and witnessed a small circular glow in the western sky, he knew instantly his E. T. had arrived, the realization buttressed by the way the craft hovered, just before it slipped below the tree line. He instantly jumped out of bed and changed into the clothing his mother had laid out for the impending school day. The dog, Flanders, enthusiastically at his side, ready for an adventure, gave impatient little yips. They carefully went into the cool night, leaving Mom and Dad peacefully sleeping.
          Then, into the woods, both intimately familiar with every inch they were to encounter. First came the trees Arliss and his friends often climbed; next, their favorites, the cherry trees; then, the old rotten birch. Beyond the one great black walnut tree, the undergrowth thickened and they fought to get ahead. Arliss had correctly guessed the spot of the landing, next to Peavy‘s Creek. He was careful to remain hidden, as he crept through the final high weeds and peeped between the parted stems and leaves. Flanders had lowered himself to his belly and crawled along also. In the middle of the clearing was the egg-shaped pod, resting on a broad base. Because it was not open, he was certain the creature had not left its confines but was holed up in there, planning a next move. Arliss realized this might be a job too big for a boy alone, with just his dog. “Come on, Flanders;” he whispered, “We’ve got to have some help.”
          They retraced their movements back through the brush and woods.
          It was off to gather his friends, Petey, Olive and Curley. His true blue friends had never let him down. It was logical to start with Petey, for he lived just four doors up from Arliss. He approached his friend’s open bedroom window and pushed his face against the screen, whispering Petey‘s name. But, Petey was in no mood to be roused from his nice bed. With Arliss hissing at him through the window, Petey turned over, facing the blank wall. He refused to acknowledge the entreaties to get dressed and come outside. His dog, a mean little Weiner, came out through the doggy door and became increasingly aggressive at Arliss, who ignored her until she became loud enough to disturb the adults of the house. He scurried off, with the Weiner biting at Flanders’ hindquarters for a way.
          He was disappointed, but, well; Olive and Curley -
          Olive’s home was near the playground, one street over. She was a lanky kid, the only girl in school that wore pigtails. She ran and threw the javelin, and she got perfect grades, too. Arliss held her in awe, most of the time. His special way of alerting her, whenever he wanted her to come outside, was to send Flanders in her window, to nuzzle her cheek and neck, until she sat up.
          Five minutes after Flanders went to her, Olive came outside, still in pajamas, with a housecoat to ward off the chill. She listened attentively to her good friend’s plea, then she told him solemnly that she could not risk getting into trouble. “Mom is taking me shopping, after school. I need some sweaters and a few pairs of shoes.”
          Despite repeated entreaties, she would not change her mind. He was forced to turn to just Curley, and Curley’s judgment sometimes made that boy a menace.
          He hustled as quickly as he could, down Olive’s street and up the only street left in Gus’s Crossing. Curley would be at the end, sleeping in the treehouse his father had built him. Arliss came into Curley’s yard and looked up the tree to Curley’s door. Curley had been known to booby trap the treehouse entrance, for fear of wild tigers, or, worse, wild tigers and bears. So Arliss sent a call to his friend’s cell phone. Curley managed to answer, grunting something like, “Mff?”
          “It’s me. Curley, I need help. I have a genuine extraterrestrial out in the woods. This is too big for me to handle alone.”
          Curley said, “Wmf,” and his phone went dead.
          Arliss was persistent, but he could not get him to answer again. He looked down at Flanders. “Well. It’s just you and me,” he pronounced, crestfallen.
          When they returned to the scene, Arliss reoccupied his vantage point, looking between the leaves, at the now open pod. He detected a pale glow, emanating from within. Which presented a dilemma. Ought he assume the creature had left the ship? Or could it still be within, doing alien stuff, preparatory to going out? He sat there, until daylight, afraid to make a move. His mother called his phone. “Where are you?”
          “Watching an E. T.,” he whispered.
          “Where? You know you’ve got to go to school today, and there’s no time for viewing movies.”
          “No, Mom. For real. It’s a spaceman parked in the woods,” he said, feeling desperate to be believed. “I’ve got to have some help.”
          “Call on your friends: Petey and Olive. I’ve got to go now. Take out the garbage when you get home.”
          “But -”
          Already, she had hung up.
          “Bye, Mom.”
          He sat with an arm hugging Flanders, staring at the pod. After two more hours, he simply gave up. He sent Flanders home, then ran off to school.
#
          Theirs was a very small campus, making his friends easy to find. The single long hallway that connected all eight grades, plus the offices and the cafeteria, bustled with the traffic of students. He saw Olive right away, slinging off her backpack and letting it sit atop a bench. She gave his clothing a critical examination, as he approached, her look critical that he could be so disheveled and unprepared for school. “You forgot your backpack,” she observed.
          “Huh? Oh, yeah,” he answered back, dismissively. “I wish you could have come with me, last night. I couldn’t get anything done, by myself.”
          “Well,” she said, “I have important things of my own this week. Mother doesn’t want me to do anything that might keep me from having a great school year.”
          “But, this is important, too,” Arliss maintained defensively.
          “I’m sorry, truly am, but we aren’t small kids any longer. I’ve got to think about more grown-up things, even if it means hurting your feelings.”
          “But, this is the real thing,” he begged. “I’m not playing this time.”
          The bell rang. As she was taking up the backpack again, she said, somewhat sarcastically, “Like you weren’t playing the time we followed a weather balloon ten miles and fell into a swamp and came home with poison ivy.”
          “This is different,” he replied plaintively, as her long strides took Olive away down the hall.
#
          All through English class, Arliss and Petey exchanged notes, slipping them across the aisle whenever Miss Eggers faced the blackboard.
          Note One: “How come you didn’t get up and go with me last night?”
          Note Two: “I’m going into football. I need my rest. I won‘t have time to join you, this adventure.”
          The other nineteen notes were consumed with bickering and wheedling.
          Arliss scarcely could imagine it. Between Olive and Petey, the gang was broken up. There remained just him and Curley, and he had doubts, now, about Curley.
          At the close of school, he sought for Curley, but the boy had become as elusive as good grades and regular attendance. He could not feel more alone if he were suddenly orphaned. Only Flanders, greeting him as he approached home, sparked up his spirits a bit. Together they enjoyed a snack. Arliss considered the daily chores he had been entrusted with, then decided the intergalactic being to be most important in the list of responsibilities, so, he set off through the woods.
#
          He resumed his spying from the same vantage point as before. The pod looked exactly as it had then, with still no clue of the slightest activity, beyond the opened up entry access. Shortly, he became restless. What if the creature were injured, or dead, even? He owed it to basic kindness to go to it and see. And he left the security of being hidden, to walk slowly in the direction of the pod. Almost immediately, he slammed into something invisible. He reached out, putting the flat of his hand against the surface and withdrawing it instantly, due to a crack that felt like static electricity. “It’s a force field,” he told Flanders.
          Arliss believed that everything had a flaw. There simply must be a way to breach the alien’s security. After the briefest examination, he discovered that, at ground level, the force field shot out little flicks of light, all along the edge. Arliss began tracking the border of it by following these lights. He noticed, where it crossed the creek, the lights went over the water surface, not under it to the bed below. Being on the impulsive side, he instantly decided to swim beneath the line and hopefully come up on the inside. He left Flanders, whining for him, at the edge, and he immersed himself in the cool water.
          At the instant he ducked under, he experienced the dread of getting zapped to death. Tightly shutting his eyes, he plunged ahead. After an anxious moment, he emerged on the other side. From that new vantage point, he could see something, man-sized, on the other bank, a little way downstream, where the earth dipped, making a shallow pool, bordered on the land side by a wide ring of mud. The alien was a foot deep in the muck, engrossed, scooping up dripping balls of mud, pushing it into its face.
          Arliss fell back and nearly retreated into the creek. “A giant snail,” he said under his breath. “That’s disgusting.“ But his curiosity outweighed all consideration.
#     
          On the first impression, the creature indeed looked snail-like, but closer inspecting reveals characteristics most resembling snakes. His squat body was propelled by a scaly slithering mechanism that could outrun a person, or go up a tree, equal to any monkey. His long arms bore a similar design, but the slithering mechanism had atrophied, long ago. At the end of the arms were hands, each sporting three fingers, and two opposable thumbs. The digits were capable of stretching up to four inches longer, becoming incredibly slender, with nubs like nails at the end. In repose, the fingers were thick and short. There were no bones anywhere inside the body, but the appropriate anatomy was supported by strong muscle tissue, buttressed by a material similar in composition to the exoskeleton of an insect. Twekians wore no clothing. Their reproductive organs were hidden from view, except when needed; thus, there was nothing on which to build shame or embarrassment.
          Its head was rounded, capable of pivoting like an owl’s head when necessary, with a face with a great flat nose in the center, and a tongue-like organ that popped out of the nostril cavity to hold in or shove in food, as it was doing now, with the mud. Its mouth resembled that of a trout, with bone-like ridges inside that served as teeth. Twekian vocal cords were remarkably human-like and they communicated through speech, in a language as complex as English. The eyes were bulging balls, haze grey in color, and capable of fixed or independent movement, dependant on the circumstance. The eyes were fixed at the moment on the task at hand, making it oblivious to the approach of the youngster, who now advanced, one halting step at a time.
          Not wanting to be left behind, Flanders loped up behind his buddy, having slipped under the force field after him. It was not until he approached Arliss he noticed the Twekian, packing in the mud. The dog sprang backward, about ten feet, suddenly barking, out of fear.
          The creature spewed a mouthful of mud as it jerked around, in an instantly defensive mode. The grey eyes waved slowly about and it produced a purple gadget that Arliss was certain must be a disintegrator ray gun. “Wum wim gagomb,” it said, in a measured, reedy voice.
          It was then a Twekian stench wafted on a tiny breeze, straight to the nostrils of the boy. He said, “Aw, no. I can’t do this.”
          Arliss made a pushing off gesture with his hands and executed a dash for the creek. The Twekian blocked him from leaving, by putting on a burst of speed and cutting him off before he had a chance to jump in. It held up the purple gadget and pressed it against the boy’s head. Thinking he was as good as dead, Arliss shrugged. “Please don’t hurt my dog,” he pleaded.
          “Can you understand my words, now?” The Twekian asked.
          “I do,” he replied, as it dawned on him that the purple thing was meant to allow Twekians to communicate. As it turns out, they could do so with virtually any language proficient species, even ones as primitive as monkeys and dogs. “But you stink so badly,” he added.
          “What? Well, you have a peculiar odor about you. I suppose it’s a species centric issue.”
          “Have you ever heard of a bath?”
          “Are you calling me dirty? Twerp. I sweep my body with a QRC decontaminating broom twice each day. Inferior species ought to mind their tongues,” the indignant alien admonished.
          Arliss felt like arguing with the stinking space-thing, but he was uncertain how much free speech it would tolerate. “My dog’s not inferior,” he insisted.
          “My name’s Baker,” the creature stated. “I don’t want you here,” he added. “I can’t let you leave, however. You would alert hostile elements. I just want to harbor in this place, until my rescue comes, then leave this planet unaffected by my visit. It’s a planetary code that we leave developing worlds to chart their destinies, unaided. Interesting rule, in this case, since world extinction seems the probable outcome. So, I want for you to enter my pod and confine yourself there until my help comes.”
          “Fat chance, since I don’t see a weapon on you,” Arliss said, hoping he was correct.
          The Twekian executed a series of clumsy-looking maneuvers while waving its arms in snake-like motions. “Puny earthling. I bet you are just a child. What‘s your name?”
          “Arliss. And if that pod smells like you, I’m not going in.”
          “Twerp. Punk. Get in that pod.”
          Arliss began to suspect the extraterrestrial must be hard-wired against physical violence. His propensity to linguistic violence notwithstanding. He began to edge around it, preparatory to leaping into the water, when, of a sudden, Flanders, liking what he smelled, began to rub himself against the alien’s leg. Baker immediately placed the language instrument against the dog’s head. They conversed, the result being that Flanders set himself before Arliss and barked at him, several times. He then trotted to the pod and leaped inside.
          The boy exasperatedly called after his dog, but Flanders would not respond. “You cheater,” he yelled at the space creature, stalking after the disobedient canine. “Flanders. I intend to leave you home, after this.”
          He placed his hands on the rim of the hole and peered in, spying Flanders, rolling in a pile of alien garbage, with total abandon. When his commands to come forth went completely unheeded, he was forced to crawl in after him. Collaring his pal, Arliss tried to lead him out. Flanders had other ideas, planting his feet on the deck and pulling the opposite way. The creature filled the open hatch. “You can’t leave,” he said. I have activated a force to keep you in.”
          To test that pronouncement, Arliss released the dog and scrambled for the exit. An unseen wall and its charge bounced him back. Tossed into Flanders’ garbage pile, the boy tasted vileness. He stumbled across the chamber, where he discovered a hatch, slightly ajar. Swinging it wide, he discovered the alien’s personal space, where it bunked and stored some creature comforts.
          “Keep out of there,” the Twekian shouted, frantically.
          A spiteful impulse shoved Arliss into the room. He began tossing packs of capsules about until he discovered the hatch that allowed him into the control room. His eyes barely managed to focus on the instruments before him, when Baker came through, sputtering and fuming. “Disagreeable twerp,” he said. “These areas are off-limits. You would court disaster to fool with these controls. Right now they are set up to direct a continuous signal to guide my rescuers and it has just fuel enough to lift me into the mother ship. So don’t go fooling with things.”
          Arliss displayed an impish grin. “Will you let me go home?”
          “I have explained to you why I can’t do that.”
          The boy randomly grabbed what seemed to be a control stick, suddenly realizing the entire operation was an almost exact replica of the game system in his own residence. He could move this pod to the sheriff's office on Highway 5 if that was what he decided. “You are not so advanced as you think,” he said, still musing.
          Baker began screaming, in his own Twekian language.
          Finally, when the boy had not made a move for several minutes, he calmed down. “Let us reason this thing out,” he began, in a more moderate tone. “Why would you risk this speck of Earth getting annihilated over my getting kidnapped? Don’t you know yet that our forces are many generations ahead of you, scientifically? We have weapons that make your nuclear weapons mere child’s play.”
          Arliss wore a mask of smugness. “I don’t think so. I don’t think your people waste effort to build weapons. I think it is we who could annihilate you. I bet a water hose and a feeder full of snail poison would fix you, but good.”
          “If you provoke this,” Baker warned, “I promise you, the dog will not survive the encounter.”
          “Hee,” the boy snickered. “If your code prevents you from harming me, I am guessing Flanders too will be safe.”
          There ensued a quiet period, during which the two balefully regarded one another from a point of stalemate.
          “My importing your language gives me hints of who and what you are, almost as if I gained some of your memories,” Baker said. “I implore you to honor your commitment to yourself, to aid your own extraterrestrial, me, for it is your destiny.”
          Arliss relaxed. He looked upon Baker, his very own E. T., with great sadness. “I am so disappointed,” he said. “Kids in books and movies get adorable characters, to cherish and protect. At the very least, they have entertaining robots. Me, I get the filthiest smelling, ugliest appearing, of botched creations of nature. How can I not deny this destiny?”
          “Because, you are at heart a good person,” Baker replied, sympathetically, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
          “Damn it,” Arliss muttered, crying, cringing.
          “Damn it, indeed,” Baker comforted.
         
           
         
       
           
       
       
       

I'M DARRYL

          It was the final straw, that notice from the Social Security Administration. According to it, Darryl was deceased. Not just that, but he died four years previous and therefore his estate owed the government this humongous figure, he could not remember how much, for continuing to receive money after death. He was a bit simple, poor man. At seventy-five he still could not grasp the ways of the bureaucracy, had no notion how to procure legal help. His online applications for jobs, made on library computers, went unheeded. His rent, two months overdue, had prompted the eviction notice that was left on the kitchen counter, along with the keys. He stepped, with a suitcase in hand and inside his shirt a pocket organizer and pen, onto the sidewalk, after carefully shutting the door. He wondered, for the hundredth time, where he ought to go. He believed, if Mom still were living, he would not be in this fix. But Mom was cremated, her ashes strewn in the flower bed she once cultivated. Her check had never been much, but she always knew what to do. His steps automatically turned in the direction of downtown, the part where the street people hang out. His mind was filled with tangled references to a younger day, fifty years ago, when he was essentially a hobo. In those times, he did not need to think about it. There were day jobs for the taking. All one had to do would be to show up and wait in line. Life was so easy then that he had hitchhiked across the Midwest multiple times, owning just a few clothes and having less than five dollars to his name each time. Still, he found a bed and food at the end of any journey.
          He was on a different planet these days, for the '60s gave way to a decade of increasing myopia and erosion of the poorest ones’ ability to make money. Following the accidental death of his big brother, Darryl reconnected with his family in the mid-’70s and settled down to a life of labor carpentry and staying home with his mother. He was a television watcher and he liked to rest from his labors with beer and TV episodes of favorite comedies and westerns. Being a lonely soul, who shunned contact with strangers, due to an inability to relax and hold interesting conversations, he entertained no illusions of having a friend or a wife.
          Oh, he once might have married a girl, when he and a nearly forgotten girl named Ellen both were twenty, for she was vulnerable and lonely at the time and did not recognize his silence for the handicap it would become, had not grasped that he had no notion of how to support or care for a family. It was up to him to walk away and in his state of alienation become the rootless wandering soul that made no connections, soul to soul, beyond the family. 
          His walking took him the length of Bradbury Street, a decision calculated to avoid the clubs on First Avenue. Then a right on Wylie Avenue, which should actually be Second Avenue. It was a street of mixed business and residential interests. Most of the homes were fenced with chain links, all modest wooden constructions. Among the businesses were a glass company and someone dealing with car batteries. A person could bring an old battery there and get a few bucks in return. Wylie Avenue intersected with Baldwin Street, a wide avenue with hundreds of pedestrians intermingled with street folk and hustlers. Darryl had never been precisely a street folk but used to approach a few now and then. The last episode among them had been an uncomfortable one. It began with Darryl spending a few days in jail, for hitchhiking too near the freeway. A fellow jailbird adopted him, for no reason he could discern. He had been sitting on a bench, staring at nothing, when Jake approached him and asked him to join him, instead of acting like a fool, “which is what you‘re doing.”
          Darryl was grateful to receive any attention at all, even if insulting. He followed Jake and stood around, listening to him speak and throw a few barbs at other inmates from time to time. It seems he held a grudge against black people. “After what they did to me -” he said to one inmate. Jake must have fancied himself Darryl’s mate and protector. He had a way of moving between him and anyone attempting to start a conversation. Darryl remained passive, partly because it was his nature, but also because Jake promised to get him bus money out of town.
          Released from jail and back on the sidewalk, Jake immediately began panhandling. Inside of an hour, he informed Darryl he almost had the funds for that bus ticket. He decided to celebrate and bought himself a beer. That hustler quickly drank up the money he had promised.

Darryl, in his disappointment, began to realize he needed to set out on his own. Meanwhile, Jake was conversing animatedly among a group of eight street people. One street person approached to ask Darryl a question or to make an observation. Jake was all over the man, fists doubled, telling him to back off and let his friend alone. When Jake went back to the store for more alcohol, Darryl walked away, as fast as feet could take him.         
          That day he walked far beyond the city limits until it became dusk and the freezing weather prompted him to approach a gas station. “Do you mind if I get warm by your heater?” he asked the attendant?
          He found himself enthusiastically invited in. After a few moments, his genial host exclaimed, “Aw. You’re hitching. Where are you going?”
          The incident was transpiring at a time when Darryl had begun tiring of being always on the road. He was grateful beyond measure when the man pressed bus fare into his palm and instructed him how, where and when to board one. And so he rode in comfort and rested the whole way to his destination. He could no longer recall said destination, but he never forgot the gas attendant. His next time through he looked for him, with money for reimbursement in his pocket, but was unsuccessful at finding him.
          As he stood at the center of the block on Baldwin Street, between Hawthorne and Porter Avenues, he watched the street activity and awaited a cue. As he loitered, there reeled a memory of hitching across Oklahoma and getting a ride from a police officer, who at first offered him a bed in the jail, then let him off in Wichita, after he declined the bed offer. As he stepped out of the police car, other police cars converged from all around the city, with their lights full on him. He knew they were sizing him up in case they needed a suspect for the time he spent on their turf.
          After they disbursed, he had traveled but a short distance when there appeared before him an all-night diner. Penniless, he nevertheless went in. “Do you have some work I can to do for a meal?” he inquired of the woman, who worked the shift all by herself.
          Turned out, she had a big heart. Without hesitation, she said he could mop the floor in a while and then be fed. She lead Darryl to a back room and showed him to a cot. “You can rest here until I am ready for you,” she said.
          He marveled to this day how kind she was. And then she would not allow him to properly clean up the place, but instructed him to just sling a dirty wet mop over the floor. In ten minutes, he had finished. She brought him the greatest breakfast they made there, along with a steak dinner. It lifted his spirits all the way to Kansas City.
          He almost smiled, remembering. Then became aware he was being spoken to. “You with the suitcase.”
          “Huh?”
          “What are you doing here?”
          The accosting man bore the air of a self-assured smart aleck. Darryl knew from long personal experience he could be easily manipulated by such a person, should he allow him to grow too familiar. He warily eyed the man, who had the elbow blown out on his imitation leather jacket and effected a cocky strut in his step. He asserted that he awaited a friend, to pick him up, and moved near the curb, feigning expectancy. The man believed him and altered his approach accordingly. “Can you spare some change? A dollar, maybe?”
          The man pushed a flat palm at him and impatiently waited for money to appear on it.
          “Oh, I can’t.” Darryl’s apologetic response had the man wrinkling his face in derision and pitching the hand repeatedly before his face.
          Then Darryl remembered seventy-four cents in his right pants pocket. He reluctantly dug it out and held it up for the smart alec to take.
          He watched the smart alec combine the coins with additional money, counting, calculating, then, turn wordlessly and hurry off to the corner store.
          Gusts of cold wind breached Darryl’s clothing. He wrapped his jacket more tightly, facing the street, the toe of one shoe jutting off the sidewalk. A clumsy action caused the suitcase to flip open, its contents dumped and scattered in the gutter. He stepped down and bent to retrieve it all, unheeding of cars slipping by. A cream-colored SUV clipped his shoulder and sent him sprawling, half on the concrete, half in the gutter. He lay still, uncertain if he ought to move. Through waves of blackness and light, he watched car wheels turning relentlessly before he passed out.
          When Darryl awakened, he found himself fully in the gutter, beside an empty suitcase. He could not understand that on a bustling sidewalk or traffic-clogged street nobody would play the good Samaritan. He began to see that a man could die in plain sight only to get swept up like refuse the next day. He waited and nobody came. Finally, he let his head back down and closed his eyes.
          There ensued a deep sleep, black and formless and eventually interrupted by agonizing pain. He had to help himself or die. It required a Herculean effort by the injured man to set himself upright. His belongings were forgotten when finally he found his footing, as he shuffled down the gutter and realized his pockets were turned inside out. From someplace within the tortured haze, he heard a voice aimed at him and knew the smart alec had returned. The man said, “Come with me,” grabbing the good arm and tugging Darryl up on the sidewalk. “You were out for about two hours. Don’t worry; I took care of you.”
          After stumbling blindly for several minutes, Darryl understood that they left the sidewalk and entered someplace dark. His companion perched him on a plastic chair, holding on to him until it was ascertained he could sit on his own. “Here,” he was told. “Drink some of this.”
          The man pulled a flat bottle from his pocket and unscrewed the lid.
          Darryl kept his mouth shut.
          “Come on. Drink,” the man insisted.
          “I don’t drink,” Darryl stated, as though that ought to be the end of it.
          The man pushed the bottle opening between Darryl’s lips and tried to squeeze shut his nose. Darryl relented and allowed a swig to flow into his mouth. He coughed a few times but kept it down. Then he was assisted from the chair to another spot and made to lie down on a dirty mattress. The pain was exacerbated by the shifting of the shoulder, but he lay still, after making a few moves to lessen the pressure to his injury. He could not tell if the liquor helped any. He suspected it didn’t. Then he lay still for seeming hours, his mind in a stupor, his smashed shoulder suffering unrelenting torture. Eventually, the one he thought of as “the smart-aleck” came back.
          He leaned over Darryl, reeking of alcohol and tobacco. “Are you awake? I brought you something.”
          He pressed a smashed up hot dog into his hand and watched Darryl try to eat it. “I’m going to come back later and bring you a (thinking quickly) big hamburger.”
          The man poised before Darryl and looked at him a moment. Darryl figured he expected something from him, but he could not figure out what something might be. “I’m Dennis,” the smart-aleck said.
          “I’m Darryl,” Darryl replied.
          Dennis turned away and vanished in the darkness.
          The injured man tried to diagnose his injury, whether a separation or broken bones or both. Ultimately, he had no idea. “To a hospital,” he muttered. “Got to get -.”
          After many tries, he stood on his two feet and set his course for the glow of light in the distance. The shelter he was about to leave proved to be a construction of cardboard and plywood, mostly. And the chair and mattress were the sole furnishings. The narrow distance between two tall buildings afforded a lane that lead him to a sidewalk. He was not able to guess the street he came out upon but reasoned he could not be far from where the SUV knocked him over. A short exploratory walk convinced him he was a block off Wylie Avenue. And left from there would have him back on Baldwin. But the charity hospital had to be about ten blocks away, in the other direction.
          He set out and made steady progress in his journey, despite stumbling over the irregularities he encountered with almost every step, for the sidewalks here were cracked, the concrete shifted, over many seasons of neglect. He was aware when Dennis caught up to him, made so by the distinctive flavor of his voice. “What are ya doin’? Ain’t I taking care of you?”
          He fell in step with Darryl, haranguing as he walked. “I brought you some food, but you weren’t there.”
          Then he tried to halt Darryl’s progress by stopping in front of him. “Where ya goin’?”
          Trying to step around, Darryl explained, “Charity hospital off Dickenson Street.”
          “You’re crazy,” Dennis scoffed. “Ain’t no hospital anywhere near Dickenson Street.”
          But it was the location of the hospital where his big brother drew his final breath, following that horrendous traffic accident. His experience told him Dennis was wrong and he picked up his step. “Yes, there is” the response came in the form of a rare assertive snap that caused his tormentor to back off.
          Light sleet peppered the men and twisting gusts of wind tormented them. Dennis threw up his hands, thereby placing a wall between himself and this man he had taken under his wing. “All right,” he said. “You know where to find me.”
          The smart-alec hoisted his collar over his neck and quickly vanished.
          Grimacing, he began to doubt his stamina, but the hospital must be very near. Desperation alone kept him aright until he staggered across an intersection and knew by his surroundings he was almost there. The dwindling sleet storm stung less, as he came up a high curb, expecting to see the charity hospital. Instead, he almost bumped into a tall chain-link fence. The fence blocked out the entire block. Behind the fence towered the hospital building, dilapidated and boarded up. Its once proud front appeared to droop with sadness. He stared at the abandoned hospital in horror. He stood there until his vision was blurred by the tears flooding from his eyes. Eventually, Darryl wondered what sort of food Dennis had for him, as his aching legs turned him around to try to make the journey all the way back.
          His toes felt frozen. Water had trickled inside his collar. He was starting across the intersection when a shrill voice caused him to look around. Pausing, he scoured the area with weakened eyes without seeing the loud person. “Where are you?” he croaked at last.
          “Over here.” The voice issued from within the hospital fence enclosure. “Come get warm.”
          The stranger directed him to a rent in the fence, large enough to accommodate a man. “We’ve got a fire and everything.”
          With a short burst of renewed energy, he followed instructions and forced his way through, onto the forbidden grounds. The strange person had not emerged from the shadows. He was not even certain which gender to assign. He followed the dark form inside, through a formerly boarded-up door. There were fire flickers now and he could make out the silhouetted slender form of a lady. She lead him into the next room, where a cheery fire roared, in the middle of the marble floor, a bearded man feeding it. Safely back were cardboard boxes, some of which had been fashioned for resting upon. Darryl and the woman halted at the optimum distance for warmth, she rubbing her hands, seeming somewhat gleeful, he shaking violently, nearly losing balance. When the woman gauged his condition she unzipped and pulled away his wet jacket. She dug among the boxes until she came up with a beach towel. She threw the towel about Darryl’s shoulders and used the loose ends to wipe him dry. The shivering subsided, in increments. The woman had in the meantime discovered the blood on his shirt. Taking great care, she opened the garment and took a look. “Oh God,” she said, despairing. “I can’t do anything about that.”
          The bearded man had come up to watch. “Belle,” he said. “Give ’im a few hits.”
          His name was George. He produced a pipe, which was passed to Belle, who lit its cargo with a disposable lighter. She pushed it in Darryl’s mouth and told him to take a drag. Darryl had always felt morally opposed to illegal drugs, but in this dire crisis could be persuaded to try anything. He knew by watching movies on television how taking a drag works and so was administered two hits. He had been rendered virtually incapable of speech and so regarded his benefactors with wordless gratitude. The stuff from the pipe had an immediate effect on the pain and as he relaxed, he began looking at the cardboard for a potential bed. Correctly reading his actions, Belle lead him to her own bed of cardboard and helped him settle there. In a short time, he went sound asleep.
          It was then George and Belle’s true nature became apparent. They were disgusted that the new arrival already had been robbed. There wasn’t even lint in his pockets. There was another worry. “If he dies here it’s going to stink up the place,” George lamented.
          “We can’t toss him out. He’ll die for sure.”
          “He’s not our responsibility,” George insisted. “We can’t even take care of ourselves. Let’s leave him in here and start a new fire in the next wing.”
          After much persuasion, she gave in and they quietly slipped away.
          The next hours were sentinels over his still form, the raging fire reduced to ash and embers. Belle’s last act before she left Darryl was to drape his jacket over him. Eventually, he stirred and, being cold, he wrangled the jacket on. He understood that his benefactors had deserted him. There was no bitterness tied to the realization. They had gone out of his life as had everybody in the world but Mom. He accepted that.
          Darryl moved his bed closer to the warmth of the embers. His one hand barely managed the move. In fact, it required three trips to put it all together. He was weary. He eased himself down and passed out.
          His sleep was dark, dreamless, permeated with pain. It might have lasted many hours but in the mid of night, he found himself roughly taken up and carried away on somebody’s shoulder. He knew somehow the shoulder belonged to a firefighter or a police officer. He was coughing, barely able to breathe, for a thick black smoke had replaced the clean air. Only slightly conscious, as they loaded him on a gurney, he marked the faces of the EMT crew. Then he awakened in a hospital bed.
          Many tubes and gadgets clung to or penetrated his upper body and a nurse was taking his blood pressure reading. When she saw him stirring, she planted herself before his face. Speaking loudly, the woman asked for his name. His tongue moved, but no words issued from his mouth. She tried in vain for several minutes to establish an identity for Darryl. She wrapped up her tasks and went from the bed. He longed desperately for a drink of water.
          There quickly arrived a battery of obviously important representatives. Their leader, a pugnacious man wearing a charcoal business suit, named Will Sykes, lead the charge. He regarded Darryl sternly and Darryl could not meet his gaze. “May I have your name, please?”
          The man’s no-nonsense demeanor yielded the identical result as had the nurse’s questioning. He began again. “Perhaps you don’t understand. We want to help you. With no personal information, we can do nothing. You trespassed on a private property, which got burned down. Two persons were killed. It is a grave matter. Would you like some pain medicine? With no information, we cannot administer even that.”
          Darryl’s eyes pleaded for compassion. Sykes would have none of it. “Because you are refusing to cooperate and because the police have not arrested you, this hospital has no choice but to put you out of it.”
          The ill man was stupefied. He had never heard of hospital “dumping” and had assumed a patient’s well being to be the ultimate goal. That he was being rolled out in a wheelchair to a van, to get put out on the street somewhere, seemed entirely too surreal. The vehicle stopped on a traffic-free stretch of street. The crew hustled Darryl out on the sidewalk. After balancing him, seeing him take a few steps, they and the van cruised to the light ahead and made a quick right turn.
          He surveyed the unfamiliar street, as far as he could see up it. No point of refuge greeted him. At the intersection, he carefully let himself down from the curb, aware that should he fall he likely could never get up again. Having lost his jacket at the hospital, he went with arms crossed, looking for anything that had paper or cardboard, to use for warming purposes. At the end of the street, he came upon a carnival and continued onto the grounds. Clown dummies howled with manufactured laughter. Men threw balls, trying to knock down lead bottles. Deepest in were a Ferris wheel and a rollercoaster. The food booths wreaked of hamburgers and corndogs. For Darryl, food had lost all meaning. He nearly collided with a young bull of a man, who was intent on showing his girlfriend a good time. The man laughed and advised him to give up drinking. Then he saw the blood on Darryl’s shirt. Subdued, he and his date hurried off, blending into the crowd.
          Two children began to follow him, throwing up questions, such as, “What’s wrong, Mister?” and “Mister, are you hurt?”
          Cruelty manifested itself when he moved along without responding. The smaller boy scooped a candy apple core off the pavement and made a baseball pitch that put it in the small of Darryl’s back. The hit elicited no response. His feet continued moving. The larger boy restrained the smaller and lead him away.
          Two men, obvious carnival employees, came and escorted him off the grounds, releasing him on a dark street. They held his arms and propelled him to that spot, before releasing him and hustling back to their jobs. Having reached that imminent point at which mortal flesh must give way to dissolution, he stayed as they put him, tottering like a pillar that must crumble, causes for moving exhausted. At seventy-five he had gone on more years than many of his peers. It was a statistic, merely, and no cause to feel grateful. No longer aware of his surroundings, he failed to detect a car that slowed when passing. He only heard when it returned and parked. He could not tell that a woman had taken it on herself to approach him, that she felt concerned, that she was a lonely widow, out driving, and that she had the money and influence to rescue him, to take him into her home and there dwell in comfort throughout his years of December. 
               
             

PENNY AND DREW AND THE NEARLY PERFECT ZOO

Penny and Drew are my two friends who inspire me to write about zoos. If you like any zoo, please read along with me.

And when you think of a zoo, don’t you love that there is a place with lions and monkeys and elephants; with tigers and bears? Crocodiles and giraffes? Plus all those birds? And that you can visit any day you like?

They are precious, these animals. But do you ever consider this; that they likely all consider themselves prisoners, the ones in ordinary zoos? Isn’t it sad that they must endure life in small enclosures? If you had to live there, I am sure you would get tired of such a place in a short time. Think of it: A bear for instance, born to roam its territory in its own way, without restrictions, but now in a cage with nothing to do all day long. The bear must get lazy and bored. It must dream of home, far away. It must dream of the bears left behind when it was captured and sold. I am here to ask you: What if you could visit another kind of zoo? One that the animals could enjoy?

Penny and her friend Drew felt there ought to be one special, nearly perfect zoo.

In The Nearly Perfect Zoo, the bears have miles and miles in which to roam. Some live with ice and snow. Some live in green forests. There are eight species of bears. All need a territory. Six of these are omnivores. Polar bears are carnivorous, while pandas eat mostly bamboo. Bears stay to themselves, except when mothers are raising cubs. They can outrun humans and they can climb up trees. You would not guess by looking: their nearest relatives are seals.

Then we have the elephants. These giant creatures are intelligent and kind hearted. Maybe not, if you scare them or harm them. Given the chance, they form a loving herd that cares for and protects each member. They will mourn fellow elephants’ deaths as much as humans mourn human deaths. They need lots of room to grow and to forage, for they eat up to eighteen hours per day.

The monkeys in Penny’s and Drew’s Nearly Perfect Zoo live in trees and not jungle gyms. Some monkeys actually live on the ground. There are about two hundred and sixty-four species of monkeys, from Africa, Asia and South America. Different species eat fruit, insects, flowers, leaves, even reptiles. Monkeys are cousins to humans, as are apes.

Apes in The Nearly Perfect Zoo are closer to people than are monkeys. Chimpanzees have the same blood type as humans. In fact, scientifically speaking, humans are considered apes. Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Bonobos, and Gibbons, may be found in Penny’s and Drew’s incredible zoo. 

Tigers lie in sunlit glades. When they want some dinner it is their lot to chase down a hapless animal for food. It sounds awful, and it is. But - More awful than raising cows for turning them into hamburgers and steaks? Some of us become vegetarians to avoid the mistreatment that livestock must endure. But tigers cannot do the same. All of this is one of the reasons that The Nearly Perfect Zoo can never be fully perfect.

Lions have become nearly extinct, except in the world’s best zoos, where many thrive. The few left in the wild get hunted and otherwise crowded out by civilization. Penny’s and Drew’s Nearly Perfect Zoo is the best place to let them come back to sustainable numbers.

There are ponds, streams, and lakes where animals can drink or bathe - and alligators, crocodiles, turtles and fish live as nature intends it to be.

Birds by the millions, from all quarters of the Earth, make vees in the sky, sing in the tops of trees in Penny’s and Drew’s Nearly Perfect Zoo. Their feathers are infinitely colorful. And most birds are extremely smart. Certain crows and parrots are at the top of the list. There are individuals who believe birds are descended from a branch of the dinosaurs. Which makes me think there had to be some intelligent dinosaurs behaving like birds.

More animals, both large and small, burrow and climb and dig tunnels. The very small spin webs, make paper-like nests, dig deep holes, and make cocoons on leaves, preparatory to emerging as moths or butterflies. It is a busy place, this zoo. Any animal that you might ever hear of or see lives just the way it was born to live, in trees, caves, nests and hives. It might sound outrageous to some, but there are villages, towns and cities, as well as farms and ranches in Penny’s and Drew’s Nearly Perfect Zoo.

These are inhabited by arguably the most interesting species of all. But to qualify for residence there, there are rules to be obeyed. The intended inhabitants of these dwellings and properties are highly intellectual and for the most they want to be able to think well of themselves. Unfortunately they have developed some bad habits that cannot be carried into a zoo such as Penny and Drew have imagined. The zoo could not survive the habits.

For the species has learned how to organize into camps that bluster and argue until one side or the other attacks with lethal weapons. To make it worse, the groups have created sciences to make the weapons steadily more powerful, until hundreds may be killed in a single instance. No, warfare cannot be permitted in such a zoo.

This species has more than a few other bad habits. The many at the bottom allow the few at the top to keep the wealth even though it is the work by the many that creates all of the wealth owned by the wealthy. As a result many poor live hungry lives. Great numbers in fact have no homes or work. This too cannot be permitted inside our zoo. There must be shelter and food and meaningful work, in a land that shall not be polluted.

The third bad habit involves what some have called race hatred, or, racism. It means giving one ethnic group the advantages of society while depriving the others of the same consideration. The racists have ignored the fact that science has proved that all ethnicities are of one race. The blackest human, the palest human, all humans in between, are one species. And all belong in the zoo, or else none of them belongs.

The fourth and final bad habit concerns a society’s treatment of women. In recent old times women have been slaves, servants, child-adults - anything but equals of men. In the United States they were not even trusted to vote before many women made a stand to demand that right. A woman deserves the freedom to make the same choices that men make. In Penny’s and Drew’s Nearly Perfect Zoo it must be so.

Now it can be revealed, as you may have figured out on your own: The Nearly Perfect Zoo is another name for the planet Earth, as it could be if the Earth and its animals all were able to live as nature intended. We could view our animal friends on nature hikes and guided tours, or even as recorded on devices to view as many times as we like. And life in our cities and towns and farms would be far more pleasant than at any time in recorded history.

Penny and Drew are hoping each one of you will do everything within your power to see that their zoo becomes reality. They and I thank you for your kind attention as we wish you all a pleasant future and bid a fond adieu. Thanks to you all. 

GRAPE

As time dwindled until Earl approached his retirement date, he began to notice that the chimp in the near cage had taken to staring at him. It was an impassive stare, but Grape’s penetrating eyes sometimes made him feel he and the ape were establishing a connection. He had known the poor fellow in passing for over twenty years, without once coming in contact. His duties bypassed the animals, along with the heartless tests and nasty products, and for that he was grateful. It was almost as though he shared none of the guilt. Grape’s stares were undoing that.

In the final days at Harval Enterprises, he took to visiting Grape at his cage. Sometimes their hands would touch while holding to the bars. The chimp’s facial expressions were complexly sociable in those encounters. They always ended in a wrenching appeal from the intelligent brown eyes. He knew what was meant. It had him wrestling with his scruples in the immediate hours of arriving home. On the eve of the final day, he purchased a blue corduroy jacket and a brown fedora. He placed these items near his billfold and car keys when he unloaded and began to prepare for bed.

At work, he made a final round to say his goodbyes. He knew he was not about to be missed. He was one of the generic faces about the building but went through all the motions anyway. Then he paused before the chimp cage. After looking around, he undid the latch and coaxed Grape to come out. The chimp needed no persuading. He bounced out. With Earl’s help, he slipped into the blue corduroy jacket and allowed the fedora to top the ensemble. The two held hands and calmly walked out of the exit. Earl felt amazed nobody sounded an alarm, or noticed, at all. They went across the parking lot in the same manner: as though they were invisible. Earl folded his arms and sulked when Grape pushed into the driver’s side. After he withheld the key long enough, Grape moved over to let him operate the car. It was the first hint that Grape might not be pliable and pet-like, after the way of a dog or cat.

Earl held the door for Grape to enter and they together walked through the home, a monstrosity of the Cold War, with thick walls and windows that could not easily get blown out and a bomb shelter in the center of the building. Earl had paid to have it air-conditioned. After Grape had a look at his own room, they went to the kitchen to engineer a meal. The ape began grabbing the fruit from the fridge, while Earl heated an oversized bowl of leftover spaghetti. It was to be that they would never agree on what to have for any meals. As they cleaned up the mess and were moving to the living room, to have brandies and turn on the TV, Grape made certain moves that startled Earl.

“Here, then,“ he said, puzzled. “Are you holding out on me? Do you know sign language?”

He repeated the query, using signs.

“Yes. I am quite fluent at signs,” the ape signaled back. “I had no clue you might yourself be proficient.”

Henceforth, when chimp and sapiens converse, herein, it will be written in the English language, to simplify, but they will, in fact, be signing.

This is wonderful,“ Earl proclaimed. “You must tell me about yourself, over the brandy.”

They both were energized by the day’s happenings, buoyed by the newfound ability to communicate, and sat until the wee hours, drinking and swapping experiences. Sleep came only an hour before dawn’s breaking.

Earl felt ashamed, as a sapiens, to know Grape’s history, how he came to be kidnapped from his mother and transported to this country in a box. Then he and a dozen other bonobos, sold, to become slaves to human industry. Poor fellow, he endured thirty years’ injury and degradation, before he walked out with Earl. Now, he explained to Earl, he felt a great release that left him restless. He hoped Earl understood if he had to go for future long walks, in the dark hours, with the city slumbering. Earl replied that he understood perfectly and that he did not object.

The nightly outings were initiated deep into the following night. Grape donned his corduroy jacket and fedora and discreetly slipped out of the neighborhood. Earl tried waiting up for him, but tired of sitting alone and had long gone to bed by the time he returned. “How was your excursion?” he asked him the next morning.

“It was exhilarating, to walk, unfettered in the coolness, with no cages in the future, no one to bully me, ever again. Intoxication, my friend. And I have you to thank for it.”

Earl had converted the bomb shelter into a mini pistol range. He and Grape practiced taking shots at tiny targets for a few hours per day. Grape’s shots always went wild. Earl felt for him, but he considered that human coordination could not be bested. One day, when he had his back to the ape to clean up a mess, he caught through side vision Grape shooting straight and true, in rapid-fire. But when he turned fully toward him, Grape reverted to the old clumsiness. He thought, “Hmm.”

Earl vowed to make certain he provided all the delicacies and goodies a chimp loves to eat. He provided several bottles of brandy. All was harmony and a sense of growing contentment. He was a little surprised when Grape came home wearing a black turtleneck and indigo stocking cap. Where was the blue corduroy, the fedora?

“I took these after somebody carelessly left them hanging out. They hide me from prying eyes. I lost my other clothes.”

By day, Grape snoozed a lot. But he and Earl had their sessions, in which they ended the dichotomy of chimp-sapiens relations. If they could make the world pay attention. “They won’t. They can’t,” Grape said, bitterly. “You are the lone exception. I despise the rest of you.”

“Don’t,” Earl pleaded. “There are others like me. We are not alone.”

But the chimp was intractable, this day. He drank extra brandy and produced from somewhere a great black cigar. In the late night, when he went out, he did not even look at Earl. Approaching Earl in the morning, he produced from a secret stash a Rolex. As he bestowed it on Earl, he explained, “A present. A token to apologize for my surliness last night.”

Earl studied the watch silently. How could he accept obviously stolen merchandise? At the same time, he reevaluated his acceptance of those late-night excursions. He gave Grape a candid stare-down. “What’s going on?”

“Just me getting something back for all I’ve suffered,” Grape said, unconcerned, flippant, even.

He said nothing, then, not wanting to have a fight with his bonobo friend. But he wished the chimp would stay home, after this. One morning he awakened to find the house full of chimps. “Meet Louis, Sprout, Clack and Eether,” Grape said. “I broke them out of Harval.”

“I think I’ve seen some of you, before,” Earl said, dubiously.

“They don’t sign,” Grape informed him. “But, they will pick it up, in time.”

They went through all of the brandy in about two hours. The house began to stink from tobacco. Earl was doubting the wisdom of bringing any of these chimps home. It was not long before he determined Grape to be training his gang for crime. The ape dressed them up like Mexican banditos, as he had seen them in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was his duty to report them. But he had become afraid.

For a few weeks, the loot piled up. The chimps spent their days communicating in chimp, drinking brandy and ignoring Earl altogether, except when they needed him for a run to the store. Grape had become the Edward G. Robinson of the apes. All followed him slavishly.

Early one morning, Grape came hastily in from a night out. He had his gun drawn and he immediately smashed out the window glass near the entrance. He put his head in the hole and thrust out his pistol. After busting off three shots, he made his way out the back door. Meantime, Louis, Sprout, Eether and Clack had scattered among the tree limbs that grew about the property and were keeping a group of cops pinned down with their gunfire. The situation devolved to a stalemate, until a swat team arrived like a military assault team, with armored trucks and the firepower of an army. The swat officers wasted no time blowing the trees to splinters and making bloody messes of the four bonobo outlaws.

Earl had barricaded himself inside the bomb shelter. It was not until he realized the cops were employing a battering ram on the door he decided to come out. “I’m not one of the bandits,” he shouted as he pulled back the bars and undid the locks.

“Lie down on your stomach, with your hands behind your head,” he was commanded.

By the time the door swung open, he was in full compliance. “Don’t shoot me, please. I’m a victim.”

It was three full days before Earl was sent home from the jail. It took three weeks for him to make a semblance of normalcy about the house. He paid a tree company to clear out the busted up trees. They mostly had to be taken completely away and the stumps ground. At last, he sat down to watch TV and sip his brandy. At precisely half-past seven in the evening, he heard furtive knocks at the door. He felt a presentiment and was not surprised at all to find Grape on his porch. They stood for a minute, each eyeing the other suspiciously, and Earl stood back for the gangster chimp to enter.

Earl poured him a drink and they sat down in the great stuffed chairs to catch up on each other. “How have you been doing out there?” Earl pondered.

“Eh. They are totally inept, trying to find me. I could hide under their very noses the rest of my life. But I grow weary of the games. That’s why I’m here. I need you to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

Grape now wore a gray sweatshirt. And a pork pie hat. He pulled off the hat and looked pleadingly at his former friend. “Help me get to New Jersey.”

That request hit Earl like a frying pan to the head. “What? Just - What?”

“I can jump a ship there. Just get me in the city limits. I will take it from there.”

“How many sapiens did you kill?”

“Five. Why do you want to know?”

Earl sat in his chair, picked up the drink he had been nursing, before Grape’s knock. “I want to know more about your attitude. Do you intend murdering more sapiens, after I help you?”

“Of course. They killed my friends. It’s blood for blood, now.”

Grape poured himself another, extra tall, brandy, and he quaffed half of it in a single gulp. “But you don’t have to worry. You’re my friend.”

As sympathetic as Earl still felt for the plight of bonobos and all other victims of animal exploitation, it seemed Grape had crossed into an irreversible territory and become a threat to apes of all kinds. “Murder is wrong,” he said. “Inter-species murder is no exception. You have intelligence. Let me appeal to you to consider an alternative. Go public with your story. Seek acceptance, via social media. It may lead to your being confined at a sanctuary, but there you would be protected and live with other bonobos. You need me as the only intermediary between you and sapiens.”

“How much can I trust even you, Earl? Your very protoplasm cries out, ’Save the humans from this mad chimpanzee.’ What I want from you is a ride to Atlantic City and you to let me out on a dark street, in the vicinity of the casinos. My guns can kill at least a thousand before they get me. My sense of justice will settle for no less.”

“You’ve become a monster.”

“An elusive and clever monster. I will be honored forever as the animal who successfully fought back.”

As the conversation continued, Grape kept his grip on the pistol in his pocket. Earl knew the chimp would not hesitate to use it. Keeping a wary eye on the human, Grape sidled to his bedroom door. “Help me out,” he demanded.

Peeping inside, Earl counted three assault rifles and many thousands of rounds of ammunition. He sighed, weighted down with guilt, sadness, desperation. “It’s not for us to decide who dies,” he whined.

“I have made the decision,” Grape insisted. “It’s not even your concern. All I want from you is a ride.”

“The gravest mistake of my life - Taking you home.”

“I took your pistol from the drawer, long ago,” Grape announced solemnly. “If I can’t get you to help load this stuff in the car, I will lock you in the closet, until I need you to drive.”

Earl helped load the car. Then, he said, “Let’s make you up a disguise. The police know to look for a chimp like you. I have a grey string mop for your head. I can work some steel wool into your facial hair until it looks like a human beard.”

Earl’s grey suit jacket and a brown derby finished off the disguise. They shared a final brandy, each staring in the other’s eyes, probing for weakness, or treachery. “I shall miss the quiet times with the brandy,“ Grape admitted.

Grape buckled himself in, but Earl’s seatbelt was broken and he had to drape the strap over a shoulder to fool the cops. A few minutes later, they were cruising through town, driving east.

The traffic was quiet. The one time Earl spotted a cop car, he chose not to approach it, figuring to do so would trigger a deadly gun battle. They wended along the coast, eventually encountering the draw bridge that, once crossed over, would let them on the major highway that could get them to Atlantic City.

The car encroached on the bridge, to find the traffic arm shutting down traffic so that the sections of bridge could part and a barge with attendant tugboat could glide beyond. It meant a twenty-minute pause for the autos.

As the bridge sections parted, Earl made his fateful decision, to sacrifice himself for the possible thousand sapiens Grape planned to murder. He was no hero. His mind had gone on autopilot and he no longer was in command of his actions. Instead of braking for the traffic arm, his foot pressed hard on the accelerator.

“What are you doing?” Grape gesticulated wildly. “You don’t stand a chance of beating that bridge.”

“Don’t be silly,” Earl said, smiling. “Of course I do.”

The bridge inclined more and more steeply, on each side, as the car picked up speed. It came to the end, becoming airborne, making a nose to other bridge-half collision that folded the car back on itself.  Earl’s airbag failed to deploy. Grape’s airbag exploded, killing him with shrapnel, almost instantly. Earl felt himself propelled through the windshield and he somehow rolled onto the bridge top. He tumbled a long way down the incline before the bridge operator made the sections begin to close up again. It surprised Earl to wake up in a hospital bed, for he had given himself up for dead. It took a long time before he could trust other species again, even dogs. He spent his remaining years watching TV and drinking his brandy alone.   

                                                        END