Journal of a UFO Investigator (25 page)

“Oh,
nice
,” she said. Her voice quivered slightly. “Oh,
ba
by.”

We sat side by side on a thick limestone disk that might have been a small UFO, while the sun poured down on the stones and the weeds, and Rochelle and I sat in the shade of the sepulchres.

And she told me her story.

“The first time we saw them,” she said, “they were hitchhiking. By the side of the highway from Roswell to Corona—oh, maybe seven, eight miles out of town. I couldn't begin to guess how they'd got out there or where they were trying to get to. Just the three of them, in the middle of all that desolation.

“I said, ‘Tom, did you see those three Mexicans we just passed, standing by the road?' Well, of course he'd seen them. Tom didn't miss much, though I don't imagine you knew him well enough to realize that. He said, ‘They weren't Mexicans.' I said, ‘Oh, no? What are they then?' And he said, ‘I don't know, but they sure weren't Mexicans. They don't have the features. Maybe they're Gypsies, like the ones your friend Jessup got so excited about.' He said, ‘Gypsies have dark skins, don't they?' and I said, ‘Yes, I suppose they do,' and he said, ‘Probably Gypsies then.'

“Well, no sooner did he get this idea than he wanted to go back and pick the men up. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and started turning it around.

“We'd gone quite a ways down the road by this time. Tom always drove twenty miles over the speed limit, wherever he thought he could get away with it. And out west they don't have speed limits once you get outside the towns. By the time he stopped the car the three men were—you could hardly see them anymore. Just three black specks, way back on the horizon.

“I said to him, ‘Tom, you're insane! What do you want to do this for?' He said—oh, I don't remember everything he said, but it was all about how they might have interesting things to tell us. We might learn something from them if they were in the car with us, talking to us. Though just what he thought they could tell us, I don't have any idea.

“He said, ‘Your friend Jessup always wanted to talk with the Gypsies, didn't he? Thought they had the secrets to the universe, didn't he?' And I said, ‘Yes, and look what happened to Morris Jessup.' And he got real mad then and yelled, ‘Jessup committed suicide, dammit!' And I said, ‘Yes, and that'll be a good way for us to commit suicide too, letting those men into our car.' ”

I stroked my cheek, freshly shaved. “Tom had courage,” I said.

She looked at me thoughtfully.

“Tom had no sense of danger,” she said. “That's why he drove so fast. I'm not sure that's the same as courage, exactly. He was never in a really dangerous situation, not up till the very end. I don't think he had any feeling for what it might be like.

“He kept saying, ‘You've still got your switchblade in your purse, haven't you?' And I said, ‘Well, yes, of course I do. But there's no guarantee I'll be able to get to it in time. And anyway, there's three of them and only two of us.' And of course I didn't want to say this, Danny, but I'm sure you remember—Tom wasn't all that terribly strong....”

 

We were at the Tombs of the Kings, off Nablus Road. Rochelle had given the watchman a few coins, and he had nodded to us, and we'd gone down the crude limestone staircase among the cliffs where the ancient Jewish kings of Adiabene had carved out their burial chambers. I wore the new clothes Rochelle had bought me that morning. Shoes too, though these had been a problem. She'd gotten them several sizes too big, to accommodate my swollen foot. I had to wear extra socks on my left foot, while the right felt cramped and pinched, so I took the shoe off whenever I could.

The great circular stone, the size and shape of a tractor wheel, had once sealed off one of the burial caves. But now it had been rolled away from the door of the sepulchre and tumbled onto its side. Rochelle and I sat on it together, while she talked and I listened, and every so often I stretched my bare foot out from the shade of the cliff into the sun's healing light.

“That was our first day in Roswell,” she said. “We'd just checked into the motel, and we were trying to get the feel of the place. It wasn't till the end of the next week that we found anybody willing to admit the archive existed. It was another week before they let me see what they had. And sure enough, there was Morris's book. All ripe for the taking.

“It surprised me, Danny. It really did. I would have been ready to bet the book was hidden in Morris's house in Coral Gables, just like I told you, and the Roswell trip was one big wild-goose chase. Not entirely, of course. There were always the specimens. It would have been worth going to Roswell just for the chance to see the specimens.

“We spent three days in that motel. Travers Motel, it was called. I haven't forgotten any of the names, though I saw enough New Mexico motels during those three weeks to last me a lifetime.

“It was the morning of the fourth day that I went out to the car, just to get—I think it was a map we'd left in the glove compartment. I was thirsty, and I remembered they had a Coke machine in the motel office, and I thought,
Well, I'll go get a couple of Cokes for Tom and me.
So in I went. And there they were.”

“The three men?” I said.

She nodded.

“You know that expression?” she said. “About how when you're scared suddenly, your heart goes down into your shoes? Well, right then I understood that expression real well. Because that's what happened to me.

“Three days before, driving in the car, I'd argued and argued with Tom till I persuaded him not to go back and pick the men up. And I was so relieved when he listened to me finally. And now it was as if the men had tracked us down and come after us.”

“Had they seen your license plate, do you think?” I asked.

“I don't know. Maybe it was pure coincidence. Maybe they just happened to have stopped by the motel. All I know is, they'd made
real
good friends with the desk clerk. They were talking at the top of their voices and laughing, the big tall one slapping the counter while he laughed, he thought it was all so funny. He was the one with that awful face, with the pockmarks.

“The minute I walked in they got quiet. They were looking at me. Grinning. Looking me over, the way men always did. And the big one, with the pockmarks, called out to me, ‘Hey there, little lady!' And they all started laughing again, doubled over with it, as if that were just about the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

“My heart was pounding so hard I thought it'd burst out of my chest. But I tried to stay calm. I walked over to the Coke machine, as slowly as I could manage. I put in a dime, and
choonk
, the Coke bottle came tumbling down. And then another dime. And all the time I was trying to look like I was ignoring them, and still hear everything they said. Look away from them and still see them out of the corner of my eye.”

“Was the thin one there too?” I asked. “The one with the snaggletooth?”

“Snaggletooth. Yes, that's what you call it. I'd forgotten the word. He was there, all right. Meanest-looking man I've ever seen. And there was the third one. He was the only one they called by name. Jemi. They all called him Jemi. Even the motel clerk did. How the clerk knew those three men, I'll never begin to imagine.”

“ Jemi!” I said. “That's—”

“Yes, yes. One of the three Gypsies, or whatever they were, who wrote their notes in Morris's book. There was Mr. A. and Mr. B. And there was Jemi.... The minute I heard that name, I thought of Morris. I thought of how Tom was right, that Morris did want to find those three men, talk with them, learn from them the secrets of UFOs and invisibility and how it all fit together. Then I remembered Morris dead in his car. In the park in Coral Gables. Suffocated, his eyes bugged out in terror. And I knew they were here, and I had found them. Without quite trying to. And something awful was going to happen. To Tom. To me. To somebody.

“I took the Cokes and headed for the door. I was still trying to walk slow and easy. But you can't keep yourself from sweating. That's a fact, Danny, and it doesn't matter how hard you try. I was wearing my white summer dress, and it was all soaked, in two great streaks down from my armpits. Of course they noticed. The skinny one said something to the others, too soft for me to hear, and they all laughed. And the one with the pockmarks yelled, ‘Don't get yourself all
hot
, now, little lady!'

“I marched out, and the screen door slammed behind me. I could still hear them laughing and laughing, all the way to the car.

“I only stayed in the car a few minutes. Just long enough to get hold of myself. I held on to the wheel hard, and I shivered and shook. I sobbed and sobbed. I had this awful impulse just to drive away, and not stop driving till I was back in Pennsylvania. I didn't, of course. I went to the room and said, ‘Tom, we've got to get out of here.' And I told him why. And this time he didn't argue.”

“So you didn't see them again?” I said. “Until the last night?”

“We never saw them again, Danny. Or I didn't anyway. I can't vouch for what Tom saw or didn't see at the very end. But they weren't among the men who stopped our car. I'm sure of that.

“They must have been in Miami by that time. Or on their way to Miami. And they couldn't be in two places at once. They're very strange, and they can do a lot of things you wouldn't imagine, just to look at them or hear them talk. But I don't think they can be in two places at once.

“We left the motel as soon as we thought it was safe and found another place to stay. From then on we never stayed in one place for more than two nights.

“The first week or so we spent most of our time just hanging around Roswell. Tom sat for hours in diners and coffee shops, pretending to read the paper, listening to conversations. At first I did the same thing, though in different places. But of course I couldn't just blend in with the background, the way Tom did. So after a few days I got a job waitressing, and then it was easier. The customers liked to talk to me. The men, I mean. At night I'd go to the bars and flirt like mad with anybody in uniform.”

“From Roswell Air Force Base?” I said.

“Walker Air Force Base. Roswell Army Air Field was the old name. It was located just outside the town. They were young men, and there were lots of them, and they were lonely. Half of Roswell made a living off their loneliness. And I—well, I used to be pretty.”

For just an instant her hand went to her eyeglasses. I wanted to tell her she was still pretty, the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. I wanted to ask what had happened to her contact lenses, why she didn't wear them anymore. I only nodded and swallowed.

“Lonely people talk,” she said. “That's something I've always known, ever since I was a little girl. They'll talk unless there's no one for them to talk to or unless they've got three men watching over their shoulders to make sure they don't. When that happens, the talk dies inside them, and they die with it.

“
That
I didn't know. I've had to learn it over these last three years.

“It paid off pretty quickly, my flirting. Though it didn't feel that way at the time. It felt like forever. I spent every minute of the day terrified that the next man who'd come into the diner or the bar would have pockmarks or a snaggletooth. Or be named Jemi.

“At the end, things moved very fast. You were with Julian that afternoon, weren't you, when he telephoned me? And I told him I didn't have the book, couldn't get the book, the whole trip had been a waste? That was three o'clock. By nine that night it had all turned around. I'd seen the book. I'd recognized it at once as the one Morris had with him when he died. That nice young boy, the lieutenant, had gone to the bathroom just long enough for me to do my switch.

“I took their
Case for the UFO
, the one with all the annotations, and left in its place a perfectly ordinary copy. Which, I'm sorry to say, I'd stolen from the Albuquerque Public Library a few weeks before. If you ever see Julian again, by the way, I'd be grateful if you didn't mention that part. That was the one thing that always made Julian livid, people stealing things from public libraries.

“By nine that night I had the book in my hands, and I was sewing it into the lining of my suitcase. I already had my flight booked for Miami the next morning.

“Tom wasn't going with me. He had business in southern California, and he was going to drive out the next day, after he'd left me at the airport. I'd tell you what his business was, but I honestly don't know myself. That was one thing about the SSS: we did keep secrets. Mostly to protect one another. Those were mean people we were tangling with. They could do some awful things to us if they got their hands on us. But you know that now, as well as I do.

“Anyway, it was mission accomplished, our last night in New Mexico, and we both felt pretty hilarious. We took a pillow from the motel room and hopped into the car. And the next thing I knew Tom was behind the wheel, and we were tearing out into the desert.”

 

A party of tourists, two elderly women and a man, had appeared at the top of the rock-cut steps leading down to where we sat. They walked down a few steps, then stopped and looked around them, blinking in bewilderment. Then they went back up. One of the women, who seemed to have difficulty climbing, held tightly to the man's arm. We didn't start talking again until we were sure they were out of earshot. I watched two bright yellow butterflies play tag with each other in the sunlight, around and around my wounded foot.