The Klaatu Terminus (5 page)

“With who?” Greta asked.

“Curtis Feye.”

Greta gave that a moment, then went back to her kneading. It was her way of communicating disapproval, but not such severe disapproval that she felt the need to say anything.

“Adrian assigned him to take me to a movie now and then,” Emily said.

Greta shook her head, indicating that she would say nothing more. Emily went out to the front porch to wait for Kosh. Hamm was sitting on the swing, smoking his pipe. Emily sat down next to him and let the sweet smell of his aromatic tobacco tickle her nose.

“Hey, kid,” Hamm said around the stem of his pipe. Decades of smoking had left him with a permanent depression in his lower lip, where the pipe now rested comfortably. Hamm was even older than Greta.

“Hey, Hamm,” Emily said. They both lapsed into comfortable silence, as was their custom.

A few minutes later, Emily heard the buzz of a motorcycle approaching. Kosh pulled into the driveway and got off.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The clutch burned out on the pickup.” He held up a helmet. “I brought an extra helmet.”

Greta stepped out onto the porch. “Young lady, you are not getting on the back of that thing.”

“I’m not?” Emily said.

Greta, having said her piece, shook her head.

“We could take your car,” Kosh said. “Or make it another night.”

Emily had ridden on a motorcycle exactly once before, when she was a junior in high school. It had terrified her, but she’d never forgotten the thrill of it. Maybe it was time to try it again.

Emily looked at Hamm.

Hamm took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the motorcycle. “Used to have one of them myself,” he said. “Took Greta for a ride and she hasn’t forgiven me yet.”

“Did you crash?” Emily asked.

“Nope. Just went fast as the devil.” He set the pipe back in his lip groove and nodded. “Back in the day.”

Emily was shaking when she climbed onto the back of the motorcycle, but by the time they hit the third curve on their way out of town, her arms locked in a death grip around Kosh’s waist, her fear became exhilaration. Her life was in his hands, and she realized that she trusted him absolutely. As they sped down the rural highway, she had a sense that they were encased in a bubble of invulnerability.

Of course, she knew that a flaw in the roadway, a blowout, a drunk driver, a deer crossing the road — any of these things could send them hurtling into a ditch — but at the same time, she was sure that nothing could happen to them. It made no sense, but it was true. She gave herself up to the wind and the snarl of the engine and the hum of the tires on asphalt, and for a time she did not think about her life, or about Adrian, or of ghosts.

T
HE SUN WAS SETTING AS THEY WALKED OUT OF THE
THEATER
.

“That was the silliest thing I’ve ever seen,” Emily said.

“You didn’t like it?” Kosh said.

“I loved it!” They crossed the parking lot to Kosh’s bike. “Adrian would have hated it,” she said. “He doesn’t believe in silliness. Or aliens.”

“Do you?” Kosh asked as he handed her a helmet.

“Well, I don’t know about aliens, but I’ve seen ghosts.”

“Really?” Kosh put his helmet on and swung a leg over the motorcycle.

“Maybe they’re just in my imagination, but that doesn’t make them less real.”

“I guess so. Do you ever think that everything you see is, like, a projection of what’s inside your head?”

“Every day,” Emily said. “I believe in men in black, too. I’ve met them. Only they didn’t look like the guys in the movie.”

Emily had an odd expression on her face. Kosh wasn’t sure if she was kidding.

“What
did
they look like?” he asked.

“Like they were Amish.”

“Maybe they
were
Amish.”

“Maybe . . .” Emily was staring at the helmet in her hands, and showed no inclination to climb on the bike.

“Are you okay?”

Emily smiled, but her brow remained furrowed as she remembered the two men who had attacked her when she was a little girl. She hadn’t thought about them in a very long time.

“I was seven, I think,” she said to Kosh. “I was riding my bike when I saw something on the road. Like a big fuzzy glass disk. I thought it was really weird, but I didn’t know enough to be scared.”

Kosh regarded her with a puzzled expression.

“Then these two men stepped out of the disk — it was like a hole in the air — and they started walking toward me. I’d seen Amish people before, but they were always riding in their carts, not coming out of nowhere like that. Anyway, they walked up to me and said something I couldn’t understand. Then one of them grabbed me off my bike and wrapped his arms around me really tight, and the other one had this clear plastic rod in his hand. I think I screamed, and he stuck the rod in my mouth. He kind of moved it around a little, then pulled it out. Then they let me go and walked back to the disk and disappeared.”

Kosh said, “This is something that really happened?”

“It’s what I remember. You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that. But you got to admit, it’s kind of strange.”

“Hamm and Greta didn’t believe me either. But they took me to Dr. Harmon and he checked me over. You know, to see if I’d been molested or something. It was awful. But all he found was a little scratch on the roof of my mouth. Greta told me I must have dreamed the whole thing, but it didn’t seem like a dream to me.”

“I wonder what they wanted,” Kosh said.

Emily felt a flood of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For pretending to believe me.” She put the helmet on her head and climbed onto the bike behind him. Moments later, they were on the highway, riding into the sunset.

K
OSH TOOK IT EASY ON THE WAY BACK TO
H
OPEWELL
. When he was riding alone, he never thought about having an accident or getting hurt, but with Emily on the back, he found himself driving much slower than usual. That story about the two men made him suddenly see her as a little girl, the same way he sometimes thought of himself as a little kid in a big, clumsy, hairy body. He felt protective. And a little scared.

What had really happened? He believed her — or believed that
something
had happened, something that had scared her badly. She may have seen some Amish men. But Amish men stepping out of a magic disk? Little kids had vivid imaginations. And what was all this stuff about ghosts?

He was hyperaware of her arms wrapped around his belly, and her body pressed against his back — a seven-year-old girl in a woman’s body, still frightened by something that had happened so many years ago. He wondered if she’d ever told that story to Adrian.

Lost in thought, he was surprised to see that they were already coming up on Hopewell. He felt Emily’s grip loosen slightly as he slowed and rolled onto Main Street. He pulled over in front of Red’s Roost.

“You hungry?” he said, looking back at her.

“Grill’s closed,” Red said, jerking a thumb at the clock behind the bar. Ten o’clock.

“Come on, Red,” Kosh said. “I’ll clean up. You don’t have to do a thing.”

Red Grauber’s features contorted into a scowl. He looked at Emily. “What are you doing hanging out with this reprobate?”

“You mean my future brother-in-law?” Emily said with a grin.

Red snorted, then shook his head. “How is Adrian, anyways? You heard from him?”

“He sent a postcard,” Emily said. “He’s says he’s fine.”

“How are your folks? They know you’re frequenting my little den of iniquity?”

Emily looked around. Henry Hall was slumped at the end of the bar, a dead, forgotten cigar wedged between his fingers, staring into a flat schooner of beer. Henry was only thirty-five or so, but he looked as if he’d been drinking since the dawn of time. Jake and Ivy Anderson were filling the back booth — spilling out of it, almost — eating French fries and drinking orange sodas. A lean man with a long nose and a cigarette in his mouth was shooting pool by himself. One of the Petersen brothers. Otherwise, the bar was empty.

“Is this what iniquity looks like?” she asked.

“Iniquity, Hopewell style,” Red grumbled.

Kosh was behind the bar, scraping the grill clean.

“I suppose he’s gonna make you one of his goat burgers,” Red said. “Four days I’ve had that thing on the menu. You know how many I’ve sold? Five. Four of them to Henry.”

“Your best customer,” Emily said.

“Oh yeah? You know how long he’s been nursing that beer?”

Emily laughed and managed to get a rare smile out of Red. She hiked up onto a stool and leaned her elbows on the bar.

“Can I get you something?” Red asked.

“What do you have that goes with arugula and goat cheese?”

“You twenty-one yet, honey?”

“You know I’m not, Red.”

“How about a lemon soda? It’ll cut goatiness.”

While Red searched under the bar for a soda, Emily watched Kosh cooking, fascinated by the way he moved. Normally, Kosh was tentative and awkward — unless he was on his motorcycle. Now his movements were efficient, precise, almost graceful. His long fingers formed the meat patties and skipped them onto the hot grill. As the meat sizzled, he sliced disks from a log of soft white cheese using a thin knife. He used the same knife to cut open two buns, then fetched a bag of greens from the cooler.

Red set a bottle of Sprite on the bar in front of Emily. “I gotta say, for a shiftless reprobate, the kid knows his way around a grill.”

“I heard that,” Kosh said as he picked through the arugula.

“Has good ears, too,” Red said.

Kosh put the split buns facedown on the hot grill. He salted and peppered the burgers, flipped them, then placed a thick disk of cheese atop each patty. He watched the burgers sizzle for half a minute, then grabbed a handful of arugula and arranged it on the grill in two hissing piles. He was moving quickly now — it seemed everything was happening at once.

“How about you grab me a couple baskets, Red?” Kosh said.

“What, am I your galley slave?” Red grumbled, but he took two red plastic serving baskets from a shelf. He laid a square of parchment over each one and set the baskets on the prep table next to the grill. Kosh piled the slightly wilted arugula leaves on top of the cheese and turned off the grill. Seconds later, Emily was looking at a perfectly prepared hamburger, skewered with a jaunty cellophane-tipped wooden pick.

“Voilà,”
said Kosh.

“Thinks he’s French now,” Red said sourly. But Emily could hear the pride in his voice.

“Thank you,” Emily said. “That was delicious.”

“I sort of have Ronnie Becker to thank for it.”

“Ronnie?”

“Yeah. He took me to this burger joint in Mankato. I stole the idea from them.”

“What happened to Ronnie, anyway?”

“Oh, he’s back home now. He has a court date next month. He got caught selling weed. Or trying to sell it. Funny thing was, it was just ditchweed. About as likely to get you high as corn silk.”

“You were with him?”

“I was along for the ride.”

“Told you he was a reprobate,” Red said. There were only the three of them still in the bar. Henry had stumbled out after Red refused to refill his beer. The pool player and the Andersons had left as well.

“I told him it was a dumb idea,” Kosh said. “Not that Ronnie ever listens.” He stood up. “I suppose I should get you home.”

Outside, the temperature had dropped several degrees. Main Street was dead quiet. Red’s Roost was the only nightlife in downtown Hopewell, and Red usually closed up by eleven. Kosh and Emily stood on the sidewalk, enjoying the feeling that they had the town to themselves. Across the street, the shuttered Hopewell House loomed.

“Sad that the old hotel isn’t open anymore,” Emily said.

“The freeway bypass killed it,” Kosh said. “It closed the year I was born. I suppose they’ll tear it down eventually.”

“Such a nice building. I wonder if — what was
that
?”

A thumping sound echoed across the empty street.

“Sounds like it’s coming from the hotel,” Kosh said. “Maybe a bird or something got trapped in there.”