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Posts Tagged ‘Arthur Davis’

Published by Associate Editor on November 30, 2016. This item is listed in Issue 32, Issue 32 Stories

Captain Jack

by Arthur Davis

seaside_townLights from the windows of Brennan’s Fishing Lodge seeped through the ground fog ahead—a welcoming beacon for lost souls.

Brennan’s rested in an oval spit of land that jutted out into the St. Lawrence Seaway in the heart of the Thousand Islands of Southeastern Canada just above New York State.

The traffic light turned green. The battered gray pick-up to my left pulled away. I remained trapped in thought at the intersection in the mist of a cold October afternoon. A car drove out of Brennan’s long, sinuous driveway, stopped and turned left towards Gananaque, a quiet town about five miles west. We’d go there and walk the village when it rained and it was impossible to fish. But mostly so my brother and I could buy fireworks—boxes of fireworks, every kind and size of fireworks. The rarest of adolescent contraband and parental indulgence.

We were teenagers, when we first came up to Brennan’s in 1966. My father and his friends had fished the St. Lawrence and Alexandria Bay for years before their poker group disbanded. One of the players had accused another of cheating and the other four were forced to take sides. A meaningless squabble breached a friendship that was born before my older brother. After that, we came up as a family whenever my father could afford it, which meant a long weekend every other year or so.

Brennan’s was a spacious private home that had suffered through several poorly thought out renovations. When their children married, Molly and her husband Bill decided to put their hospitality and excellent fishing location to better use. There were four bedrooms upstairs and two smaller ones on the first floor that were in constant demand.

Guests were picked up every morning at seven o’clock by guides who tethered their launches to the long dock that poked into the bay. Molly ran the kitchen and accommodations and smiled constantly. Bill arranged for the guides and managed the finances. Bill was the straight man, while Molly plied the small dining room after dinner, ladling out homemade vanilla ice cream on top of homemade chocolate layer cake mixed with local folklore and terrible jokes.

The body of water was so vast you could spend an entire morning without seeing another soul, overcome by the beauty of lake, land, and great natural bounty of the northern rim of the Adirondacks.

Under the calm of a Canadian sun, there were no distractions from this glade of isolation and retreat. And if you were skilled, but above all patient and fortunate, you might catch a pike, perch, or smallmouth bass. If the gods embraced you, a muskellunge or northern pike would take your line for an unforgettable ride.

The light turned red then green again. The sirens called as they had a week ago. So a phone call was made and clothes were gathered and my rod was taken from the closet and memories were dusted off and confronted.

It was Wednesday. By tomorrow night, the lodge would be filled with guests and expectations, and the few who longed for solitude. I unpacked, ate alone nodding cordially at the two other families steeped in laughter and familiarity. After dinner I withdrew, as is my tendency, and had coffee on the porch overlooking the seaway. Stars twinkled above as they had on my last trip and the one before it.

“What do you know that I don’t? Probably everything. Send me a comet, a flash, or bolt. A marker. A word of truth to save me from myself,” I said pondering the possibility that the almighty may be a woman who’s been humoring the assholes of mankind simply in order to continue the experiment. Mosquitoes darted around my ankles searching for dessert.

My alarm drew me from a deep, forgiving sleep the next morning. The wind rattled the windows on the west side of the home. I washed and dressed and was greeted by Molly who scolded me for being late. I should have known better, she said, concerned that Captain Jack would be pissed.

She was right. “Does the condemned man get a last breakfast?”

Molly was about to further her rebuke. “I’ll tell him your shower wasn’t working. Sit down and I’ll get you something.”

Molly’s something was bacon, eggs, sausage, blueberry pancakes, and steaming coffee. She remembered I liked oatmeal cookies and prepared a fresh bag offered with an affectionate pat on the head as I made my way down to the landing. Captain Jack Hutchinson sat facing the morning sun, his back to the lodge adjusting a reel. A lifeless cigarette slung from his lips.

A ripple rose on the lake surface a dozen yards out to my right and moved toward the dock. It struck the piling as I passed over then disappeared under the dock. It didn’t come out the other side. I stopped and waited, but the surface of the water to the left of the dock remained still.

The first thing that strikes you about Jack Hutchinson—besides the pinch of gray hair that slipped between his coat collar and baseball cap, his cracked canvass brown skin, slight hunch, and torn black turtleneck sweater—were his eyes—a fire of cobalt blue shaded by thick brows, receding into depth and distance, set in a wasteland of cracks and crevasses, etched lines marked an absolute intensity. Captain Jack wasn’t simply looking at you, but scanning your soul for flaws.

I introduced myself. He nodded thoughtfully. We were the last boat to clear the dock. It had to bother him.

I came here because I had to, only I wasn’t certain why. Just that this was the place for me to be this weekend. This is what I told my friends. They were silent, hoping that I would find a foothold out of the miasma that had held me in its grip for these many months.

Captain Jack attended to the helm and his intuition. The sun’s glare showered us from the east, the wind confronted us from the west. I pulled my reel from my gearbox and attached it to my pole. I threaded my line and opened the bait box. A swarm of minnows frantically looked for deeper waters.

His launch hummed along like a fine tuned musical instrument. We skirted the shoreline for another ten minutes until we came around the crest of Pelican Cove. Jack throttled back the engine and slipped past a bed of thick marshes and tangled horse reed. He let the boat drift a while then dropped anchor near the trunk of a half-submerged oak.

The boat settled. The sway felt good, comforting under foot. How many times had I set my line and sent it flying out across sun-speckled water? How often had I dreamed of being up here rather than working in New York City or flying to client meetings in Atlanta or Philadelphia or kidding myself that there was still time left for me to find happiness?

“You were out with Andy Larsen,” Jack said.

Andy Larsen. “A long time ago.”

“You caught a five and a half pound smallmouth bass off King’s Point with him.”

I let the weight of the minnow drag on the line then flipped it back and sideways twenty yards off the stern. It landed near the tree stump. I’d caught my first pike out here. I remembered the cove, and Andy Larsen.

“Terrible breath,” I said, working the line.

“As long as I’ve known the old badger.”

“He knows I’m up here?”

“His back’s real bad or he would have taken you out himself.”

“I gave him a hard time.”

“You caught the biggest damn smallmouth bass he’d seen in years and twice the catch everyone else caught for the weekend you were up here.”

“He’s a good man.”

images-boat“With a blown out back,” he added as the boat drifted toward a rocky outcropping close to the shore, “Give it a toss over there.”

I dropped my line again a few yards from the outcropping and let it sink. There’s no telling where a school might be. It depended on the weather, the time of day, the current, if others boats have been around in the past few days, and luck. Even the dumbest fisherman can get a bite if luck rides his line.

“I never got that fish.”

“I know. Bill was embarrassed. Molly too. Everyone round these parts heard the story.”

“It’s probably hanging over a mantelpiece a few miles from here.”

“A prize like that’s hard to pass up.”

It was stolen from Molly’s freezer before it could be picked up by the taxidermist. “Even twenty years ago?”

“I was the one who Bill wanted to mount it for you.”

I looked into those cold blue eyes. “You’re that Captain Jack!”

A fragile grin broke across his grizzled jowls. “Ain’t another within a hundred miles.”

Captain Jack! “That’s what Molly wanted to tell me.”

“I thought she had.”

“No. I was late getting down to breakfast. There was a problem with the shower. She fed me and sent me right out to your boat.”

“Watch you don’t snag your line there,” he said, noticing the boat was turning toward a sunken branch spiking up through the surface.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said again, to the man Bill Brennan guaranteed would give me the finest fish mount in Canada. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who took it.”

“I thought about it for a long while when it happened. Everyone around these parts was surprised. Doesn’t look good for business. When word got around what happened, the local who took it, and it had to be a local, wouldn’t dare brag about his good fortune.”

I was nineteen. It took me a half an hour to bring that fish to the side of the boat. Andy kept maneuvering the bow of the boat to keep my line clear. The fish sounded, and then ran off half my line. I took him square on my flimsy six-ounce test line and he fought until the end. Andy lifted the bass out of the water and dropped it into the holding tank with our other catch.

“A very big fish,” was all he said.

It was only when we brought it back to the dock and Bill weighed and measured it against the catch from the other boats did we grasp what I had landed.

Old Andy Larsen. “What if.”

Jack turned to me, “You say something.”

“You ever play, what if?”

“Never heard of it.”

That’s because I just made it up. “Something to pass the time.”

“How’s it go?”

“Ask yourself what if you could have whatever you wanted. Like change something in your past, or live to a hundred?”

Jack thought this through. “Longer.”

“Whatever you wanted. Anything.”

“A man asks himself that all his life.”

“Every time he sees a loved-one sick or dying,” I said.

“Or wishes he’d have said something instead of remaining silent.”

“Or what if he could have gone back in time to change his life?”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Hard question to answer, I mean off-hand.”

I felt a sharp, biting tug. The line tightened and sliced left, then right, through the water. A fish will grab bait and swim with it in its mouth undecided as to whether it should be swallowed. Only if it’s swallowed can you set the hook. If you pull back too quick on the line, a fish will simply let go of the bait. The fish came around near the stern, swam on a little longer, and then released the bait.

“He’s down there,” I said pulling up my line.

Jack released the dead minnow and set a fresh one and I let it drop over the side. Jack lit up a cigarette and hung his legs over the side of the boat. He dropped the beak of his baseball cap over his eyes letting enough light in to see where my line had entered the water.

Tiny waves lapped up against the launch. I was glad to be back.

I could feel a nudge, a ping on the line. I was being tempted and teased. I moved to the center of the boat to steady my balance and gave a slight tug. Nothing. Another tug brought with it a tug in turn.

I dropped the tip of my pole closer to the surface. “What if?”

“What?”

“What if you could see the fish?”

Captain Jack came off his haunches. My line jerked to the right, then steadied itself. “What if you could see the fish?”

“Wouldn’t be much sport there,” I answered.

“It would be like hunting elk or lion. You set up the crosshairs and squeeze off a shot from a hundred yards out. Hardly call it a sport the way it used to be.”

“That’s what makes fishing different. You never see what you’re going after or what you’ve hooked until it comes to the surface. Could be anything.”

“You have to feel it, not simply pay an expensive, ill-mannered guide like me to shuttle you to the quarry.”

“What if you could predict where all the fish were all of the time? Would you still want to fish?”

He shook his head. “Not much thrill in that.”

“It’s more important to know where and how to stalk.”

“It’s about the journey.”

“That’s what most people fear.”

“Ain’t no point knowing everything.”

I gave a slight yank on the line and set the hook. Jack pulled anchor and let us drift as I worked the line. For the next ten minutes, I reeled in, then let the fish swim away as its strength overcame the tension on my reel.

“Nasty little critter.”

I pulled back some line and he surfaced a few yards out. “Pike. Nice one too,” Jack said reaching for the net.

“Not yet.”

“The tension on your drag is too taut.”

I immediately released the drag screw on the side of the reel letting my line run out faster. The fish ran out line and sounded again. We maneuvered for a few more minutes until he came to the surface for good. Jack scooped him into the net and held him out to me. “Got to be six or seven pounds.”

“Nice catch,” I admitted.

“Nice day’s catch.”

It was ten-fifteen. We went back to the lodge at twelve-thirty with another, smaller pike, two respectable smallmouth bass, and a large perch. No other boat did as well. The other guests sat at tables in the dining room while their guides went around back and ate in the kitchen or on their boats.

We returned to reality and went back out at one-thirty. The afternoon wasn’t as productive or as animated as the morning. We were relieved to see that the rest of the boats had fared as poorly.

The next day was cloudy and cool. A stiff breeze from the west set a coating of fine ripples rubbing the surface to a froth. Fish would be biting today as they came to the richly oxygenated surface. Guests were down early and eager. Breakfast was taken in greedy quantities, as if we were warriors preparing for certain battle.

We spent the morning combing Jack’s favorite spots, zigzagging across a body of water with no beginning and no end. Everyone should spend a day on this stretch of nature’s imagination—hold a pole in their hands and test themselves against a wily adversary who harms no one and provides endless hours of pleasure and, if you’re available, an opportunity for reflection. In the morning, I caught a sizable pike and had my line snapped clean, Jack insists, by a muskie he knew lived nearby. We went back to the lodge for lunch, reluctant to disclose our failures. By the evening, I had added three smallmouth bass.

As we tied off, Jack asked me if I would like to have dinner with him. I accepted. I told Molly about it. She said Jack never invited guests home. Guides never exposed themselves to such familiarity. But she approved.

West Benton Pond Lane. A winding, rolling dirt road that sprang from nowhere four miles out of town, marked by small, widely separated cottages and undulating stretches of Canadian grandeur. I was early and enjoying the scenic route. Jack said his house wasn’t much while Molly disagreed. Jack Hutchinson was an excellent cook who participated in life when his wife was alive. His daughter had moved down to Albany to work for the government. Molly said she was very pretty with her mother’s fire green eyes, her father’s sharp tongue, and a native innocence about her that belied a quick, resourceful mind. Jack saw her and his grandchildren every chance he got.

I turned onto the dirt road that twisted and rolled until a quarter mile later I saw the house that Jack built obscured by thick underbrush and a rangy stand of Canadian scotch pine. I got out with my bottle of wine in hand and knocked at the door. Something I judged as stew wafted down from the chimney.

The door opened. “Good evening,” the woman said, moving back from the door.

My first thought was that the woman in her early forties was his daughter. I strained for similarities around the eyes and mouth. A young girl in her twenties came out of the kitchen. She was as beautiful as the one who introduced herself as Gretchen. Younger, but here was a definite similarity in the high cheekbones, complexion, and the full, sensuous mouth.

Gretchen put on her coat and wished me a good evening. She kissed the younger girl on the cheek and closed the door. No other car or pickup was in the driveway. Laura introduced herself and asked me how I fared today. I recounted my mediocre performance. She curled up her legs and listened attentively. I was as captivated by her as she seemed to be transfixed by me.

She moved closer on the sofa. “You have sensitive hands,” she said taking my right hand in hers. She stroked my palm, examining the surface of each finger the way I searched for ripples on the water. “A long life and a strong mind and a willingness to explore new opportunities.”

“You can tell all that?”

She wrapped my hand in hers. “I can tell you a lot about yourself,” she announced quietly.

Her smile and charm was transparent and without guile. There was a childlike innocence and yet a depth of maturity. “Can you tell me where the fish are biting?”

She laughed. “No. I can only tell you where I am going to bite.”

I heard no other movement in the house. If Jack were about, he was either standing quite still or sleeping. “I feel at home here.”

“I’m glad.” She seemed genuinely relieved.

“And with you.”

“I felt that too when you came in. I’m usually not so trusting. Neither is Gretchen. I think you were quite taken by her.”

“She’s very beautiful. You both are.”

“And, if you had to choose one?”

“I’m very happy to be with Laura.” And I was.

“What if you could have us both at your side? Don’t most men think about that sometimes?”

“Maybe. I guess so. Maybe as often as women think about being in the company of two men.”

“Well, I think she was as taken with you as you were by her, and I don’t mind.”

“You’re very pretty,” I heard myself say.

“I feel very pretty with you.”

“You have a beautiful home.” She did. Or she and Gretchen did. Wouldn’t Molly have warned me about the possibility of a threesome? And Jack was apparently late for his own dinner. I was expecting something quite different, though what I could not immediately recall.

“I’m happy you came.”

I didn’t know who she was, or her companion’s purpose. I did not know who these women were to Jack Hutchinson. I was tempted by this girl but fought to respect my boundaries.

“We’re alone. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said and reached out and she fell into my arms.

I knew time had passed as I counted the kisses before I could count no more. She got up and took my hand and guided me to the bedroom. We held and touched and caressed, confirmed and relieved each other. I had come to Canada to find a sanctuary and had been delivered to this room not by circumstance but a design that I made no attempt to fathom.

The wind picked up outside. No one was in my room in the lodge. The wind would shake no one awake. My wristwatch said it was past midnight. I had been here four hours. Impossible! I turned and Laura curled herself into me.

She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, or held. Who she was pleased me immensely. She was darker than Gretchen. Possibly bigger boned, fuller in the chest and waist, though not heavy. Her youth wore her instead of the reverse. She was understated where Gretchen’s silhouette was more obviously seductive.

Her hands were never at rest, constantly stroking and probing and searching for delights and to please. She pinched and bit and laughed and her lips were always upon me. By the time I entered her, we had known each other forever. I did not want this night to end and was already burdened by the thought of leaving when I heard the front door open and close.

A jacket was being hung on a brass hook in the living room. Sighs of relief from the cold outside. Cabinets were opened and secured. Footsteps in the kitchen. I was concerned for Molly and Bill. These were good and decent people who deserved more in friendship than they were getting from me.

Laura turned away from me in her sleep. An omen I thought. It was an opportunity to get out of bed. Instead, I kissed the back of her neck and traced my hand down her back. I caressed her backside and moved it up in front until I could feel the heft of her breast in my hand. She moaned agreeably. I was erect and wishful.

Footsteps moved closer to the bedroom. There was no purpose in pretending nothing had happened. Laura’s touch and tenderness had vanquished the spirits that had seized my soul captive, which had shackled and burdened me. I was inspired and relieved. A sense of passion had been released and restored that I had not felt for some time.

The door opened to reveal a smattering of light from the kitchen. Gretchen came into view, turned towards the bed, and closed the door behind her. She went to the closet and removed her sweater and unbuttoned her shirt. She slipped out of her skirt. The light streaming through the bedroom door crack cut up her thigh and buttocks and shadowed her breasts. I could see the measure of her body—beautiful and full. She closed the door completely then came to my side.

“I’m sorry I got back so late,” she said taking up the corner of the comforter and slipping in next to me as though this had always been her practice. “I don’t want to wake her,” she said and set herself in the crook of my arm.

I left just before daybreak and parked in Brennan’s driveway as a delivery truck pulled out. I went up to my room showered and dressed and considered how I would reconcile with the friends I had betrayed.

I bounded down the steps as though I had been relieved of a terrible burden. I had been exorcised of a pall that had taken over and made my life less than what it could have been for too long. The casualty of my relief was that I had dishonored my friendship with Captain Jack.

Bill greeted me and Molly served me and the other guests. Molly made no inquiries as to how my evening went. When I was the only guest left, I got up and put my coat on and walked down the pier.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” Jack said and untied the bowline as I unhitched the stern line.

He got in and I pushed us away from the pier. I checked my pole and bait box. In the corner behind Jack’s seat was a long battered box tied off with a piece of string that cut into the corrugated as though it were born to it. I opened the thermos of coffee Molly had left on my table and offered a cup to Jack.

“No thanks,” he said throwing the boat into gear.

Instead of hugging the shoreline, we headed to the open bay and dropped anchor.

I set my bait and cast out. The minnow flew long and straight over the surface and arched down over the spot in my mind’s eye. There was a moment’s pause after it struck the surface then a stiff tug at the line. The fish sounded immediately. A few minutes later Jack scooped up the fat, thrashing pike.

“Let’s throw him back.”

Jack hefted the fish whose bright eyes and fins marked an adult with an excellent instinct for survival. He looked surprised. “It’s a prize fish!”

“I know. But let someone else bring him in.”

Jack examined the fish. “You don’t want to keep him?”

“Cut the hook and let him go, Jack.”

“Not a man on the lake wouldn’t give up a day’s wages for this one.”

This was something I couldn’t explain. It went in the face of the man’s job, what he did for a living. Bringing the fish back to the lodge was as much a distinction for him as it was for the one who landed it. “Cut him loose.”

Jack removed the hook and dipped the pike into the water. The pike started wiggling immediately and lurched out of Jack’s hands. He wiped off on his pants and picked up the battered corrugated box that was the size of a vacuum cleaner. “Here.”

I took it. “What’s this?”

Jack sat down on the engine housing still smarting from my largesse but with a grain of ulterior satisfaction. “I shouldn’t even give it to you after that,” he said making reference to my recent act of irrational generosity.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

I put the box on the bait locker and cut open the string. The corrugated box nearly fell apart in my hands. There was a thick roll of old newspaper in it. I peeled back the newspaper that revealed another string that was tied around a smaller bundle of newspapers. I cut the string again and stripped away the final folds of newspaper. The first thing I saw was the eyes then the teeth, then the bony dorsal spines and finally the entire body of my prize smallmouth bass.

“Andy called me yesterday. He told me he’d have it for me after nine. That’s why I couldn’t make dinner last night.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah. I left you a message at the lodge. Maybe you’ll come by tonight.”

I spread the newspaper back. How many years had it been? “I never thought I would see this. I gave up hoping decades ago.”

Jack came closer and examined the taxidermist’s handiwork. “Someone did a first class job.”

“As good as you?”

“This wasn’t done around here. I know the best in this province.”

“Then you know who took it?”

“Andy said he didn’t know. Only that someone called him and said they knew it was his and told him where to pick it up. What with his back and all, I went for him.”

“Just like that?” I believed him.

“After all these years and on the very weekend you’re up here; just like that,” he said clearing away the old newspaper, “you finally got your fish.”

We examined the sheets of newspaper. They were all dated the week that I had been up here. “And tonight?” I asked.

“If you’re up to it. You can tell me the story of how you caught it over dinner.”

“One-thirty-two West Benton Pond Lane.”

Jack stood up and looked curiously at me. “You don’t want to go there.”

“That’s the address you gave me,” I said pulling the slip of paper I wrote out as he described for me yesterday before we docked.

He read from it. “One-thirty-two East Benton Pond Lane.” Then handed it back to me.

One-thirty-two East Benton Pond Lane. There it was. Clear and unmistakable. “Why not one-thirty-two West Benton Pond Lane?”

“There is no one-thirty-two West Benton. West Benton is a rutted dirt road that was never completed. Not a house on it—one-thirty two or otherwise. Now let’s make the best of the morning and bring back enough fish to cover the lodge in trophies.”

I could still feel Gretchen’s biting my shoulder as she snuggled in beside me. I could still feel where Laura’s lips paused before she consumed me. I could still feel the warmth of love and desire.

I could still feel my soul sigh with relief.

One-thirty-two West Benton was as real as any fish I’d ever caught and as exciting as anything I’d ever done, and part of a weekend where all my ‘what ifs’ came true.

“Sounds great. Let’s make it so.”

—«»-«»-«»—

Arthur Davis

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Published by Associate Editor on June 1, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Stories

The Hounds of Zegna

By Arthur Davis

Of course, I knew they were coming, though I refused to believe I was the only one who possessed such knowledge. Had I made an adequate effort instead of my typical halfhearted attempt, the earth might have been spared. Maybe it was simply too late by the time I accepted what was happening.

dogAnyway, here we are under the thumb of Dremlins, ungainly creatures who look like giant golden retrievers standing erect on their hind legs. Except for the absence of a tail and a considerably shortened snout, the resemblance was uncanny. Their long, glistening reddish coat and small toy-like animal heads gave them an air of innocence, of childlike vulnerability.

And that’s how they first presented themselves. As space travelers who had gotten lost, had “taken the wrong turn at Mars,” as a west coast reporter smugly described their arrival eight months ago. First, came the small patrol ship, supposedly off course, filled with a dozen scrawny, fragile adolescent creatures, then, as we were seduced by our collective need to believe the best instead of being cautious about the worst, larger transports filled with yapping, affectionate Dremlins arrived in mass. But a lot can happen in eight months, like the end of civilization, as we know it.

I’ll tell you more later, but right now, I’m late for my appointed rounds. My name is Michael Joseph Denner. If you want, you can call me Mickey. I like that nickname, although I was never successful at getting even my best friends to use it. I used to be a high school history teacher. Not a good one mind you, but adequate enough to get the facts straight, though not much for inspiring young minds. I was never challenged as a child and left that legacy to each adolescent who passed through my eleven tenured years of teaching. Now, laser lamp in hand, I walk the barren streets of my city making sure that they are cleared by sunset like other Walkers, as we are called, do in every other hamlet and great city on earth, by order of the Council of Supreme Dremlins.

For that meager effort, I am rewarded with certain gifts, such as continued sight and breath. Trivial as it may sound, most other humans fared much worse by comparison. By the end of the fifth month, with dozens of battle cruisers hovering like dark clouds over every major metropolis, we should have known. But there really wasn’t any warning. So when the death knell tolled, it was a terrible surprise. Whole villages were consumed by violent plumed bursts of laser light. People and produce were incinerated in the millions like so much fried chicken. We thought they were trying to make an example of us for some yet untold reason until a pattern arose. But there was no rational reason, unless you wanted to accept the destruction of our race as the unadorned focus of their ambition.

The first wave of Dremlin dogs, as they were once referred to, quickly aged into mature adults whose only need was procreation. To perform that function successfully, we learned later, required all their bodily efforts and toward that end they reached out to signal others with the most hideous high-pitched howl imaginable. That searing, biting, ear-wrenching cry did not abate for days and only reached its peak during the darkest hours of their sexual compulsion. That should have been our first warning. Those who approached them to question this process were attacked on the spot. There were no regrets or apprehension on their part. When a Dremlin was in the process of mating, as more and more were, even coming close to them was reason enough for them to fire on you. Those closest to a Dremlin pair at the height of copulation were driven mad from the sound. First thousands, then tens of thousands, took their own lives in order to avert the wracking auditory pain their howl caused.

In defense of our kind, it should be mentioned that the governments and scientists of all nations did their best, but it all happened too fast. Within a period of a few months, the first wave of adolescent Dremlins had matured into ten-foot tall creatures with rapier-like talons and highly evolved ability to sense when they were in danger, if even by strangers hundreds of yards away. By then others had arrived with weapons powerful enough to begin the subjugation. They shot down fighters and missiles, as you would swat a fly from your shirtsleeve. They were impervious to our nuclear weapons, our strength, or interest in unity. We behaved as if we had a choice. They behaved as if we were born to be captives.

Hundreds of millions died in the sixth month alone. It was estimated that four billion vanished in the seventh month under the bright yellow rays their ships flooded the earth with from high in the darkened heavens. We were unable to negotiate or protect ourselves. Still, from what I heard, ten or fifteen million of us remain. For what purpose and to what end I do not know.

“How are you?”

It was my counterpart, Sam Levin. Sam was about seventy years old. He walked his ten square block patrol every night as I did. I walked my route, which bordered his for three blocks of greater Charleston, North Carolina. We spoke twice a night, cautious not to spend too much time together, lest we be detected and relieved of more than our responsibilities. There was no possibility of insurrection. We possessed no weapons except our own imagination, no interest except in our own pitiful survival. The Dremlins routinely purged towns and let us know of the decimation as if we needed any more convincing of the limitations of our capacity or future.

I flicked on the beam from what looked like an ordinary flashlight, except the bright red beam that shot out of the front could be projected a thousand yards or more. I traced the light up against some apartment buildings and down an alleyway just to make it look like I was securing the neighborhood. “I’m tired every day. I can hardly get out of bed anymore.”

“That’s the way I feel too,” Sam acknowledged.

“But you’re pushing seventy.”

“And look at what it’s gotten me,” he said standing up and scanning his laser beam along a row of second floor windows to make sure they were closed. “I think they’re watching us.”

Defiantly I said, “So what?”

As he walked into the night I heard his response, “So maybe I want to live another day, even if there is nothing left to live for.”

“You think this is living?”

“It is until I find something better.”

“I’ll see you at the meeting,” I said, though I doubted that he heard me.

We were fed our food, left to our own meanderings; those few hundred or so desperate souls within earshot of each other. Every week a representative gathered us up, measured our resistance, proffered directives, and reminded us of our precarious position. I sat through these meetings numb with disbelief and sadness. Why us? What made earth the perfect breeding ground for these beasts?

When the mating howls inflamed an already indignant world, there was an outcry that fell upon dogs all over the world, especially golden retrievers. They were hunted down, killed on sight by citizens with guns who needed to take out their frustration on somebody or something. When the slaughter escalated, people went around and broke into homes and apartments where they knew dogs lived and killed them, and then their owner if there was any interference. Of course, this displaced aggression meant nothing to the Dremlins. They went on copulating in halls, on streets, in public spaces, and especially near restaurants where food was plentiful.

The sight of a Dremlin pair having sex sickened most, if the howl didn’t quickly immobilize them with pain. One frightened legislator in China claimed the Dremlin howl was their most potent weapon. It was the highest sign of their evolutionary power and, at the same time, subjugated all those who would interfere with their design for domination. As they populated the world and long before the dimension of their aggression became evident, those sounds became a normal, if not arresting, part of our everyday lives. After a while, if you were fortunate enough not to come too close, you shut out the sounds as you would grating street noise late into the night.

I had married early and divorced later than was sensible. My wife had been a woman devoid of sentiment and possessed of seriousness so profound that to this day I wonder why I asked for her hand, and why she accepted my initial overtures. Our sex life was uninspired as was our fervor for each other. We never made much noise when having sex. At first, there were muffled groans and some spasms of excitement. In some strange way, I envied the Dremlins their exultation. To be so exuberant, so unabashed in their lovemaking was a true work of wonder. I had never known such sexual glee. I believe few had. I now realize few of us would ever again.

One friend, and I heard this only after my divorce, said my wife and I were “suitable” for each other. Suitable. I thought about that word for years. Now, nothing matters but working myself through the next day. The capacity for survival in humans is quite remarkable. I never thought of this until I saw dozens of newspaper pages filled with pictures of the most notable cities on earth flash up in a cauldron of red and yellow dust. First Geneva, London, Moscow, and Washington vanished. Before the shrieks of international outrage were broadcast, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome, and San Paulo Brazil were incinerated.

Their laser weapons surgically dissected each city so as not to disturb utilities, transportation networks, and all forms of communication. These weapons systems were far beyond our military’s grasp as were their defensive screening network. They never resorted to nuclear weapons, which surprised most of the military experts. Outside major metropolitan areas, there were no sensitive targets that could benefit them in their conquest. The human devastation was complete. Of course, the slaughter of millions was no longer a topic of conversation for the survivors. We accepted the wanton destruction, always believing that sometime in the future we would coalesce into a lethal fighting force and overthrow our captors. What most found impossible to accept was being cut off from one another. The weekly meetings helped, if only to see the faces of those who had survived.

“Don’t turn around,” the voice directed during the last town meeting. “I’ve been watching you. My name is Sara McKinney,” she continued from behind me.

My imagination flared, but only momentarily. In the last few months since the destruction rained down upon the earth, I was purged of not only my past, but also my need for a future. However, as Sara’s voice filled my ears with words, her spirit filled my chest with possibilities. I nodded slowly to indicate that I had heard her words, though there was no way to communicate to her how desperate I already was for making human contact.

“Ask old Sam Jennings about me. I am not one of them. Please. We need to stick together.”

That was all I heard. That was all I needed to hear. “You know a woman named Sara?” I asked Sam when we next made our rounds, not fully appreciating how dangerous even that question was.

Sam dropped his flashlight, wiped his brow, and then bent down to tie his shoes. He went through the motions, but I knew he was simply tired and needed an excuse to stop walking. I had no idea if he would respond, or even if he could be trusted. If he hadn’t first engaged me a month ago, I would never have allowed myself this one temptation.

“McKinney?” he asked.

“Her first name is Sara.”

“She lives over on Townsend?”

“Sam, I don’t know anything more than her name.”

“How do you know her?”
“I don’t really. I just thought you did,” I said and walked away quickly. I was stricken with fear. How many Sara’s could he know? How could he put me through that? We were standing in an open space. Patrol ships glided overhead. The night was bathed in moonlight.

Was I mad? Why couldn’t I have waited until the moon was less radiant? When the sky was completely overcast. No, I had to know immediately. I was never going to make it to Sam’s age. However, I didn’t consider that an onerous limitation.

I slept poorly that night. In the morning, I ate breakfast and called into central control. The ritual was the same every day. I was asked to repeat everything I saw and did the day before. The voice interrogating me was different every day, though it always sounded feminine. When I said I was done, the connection was broken. The phone was in limited service and was only to be used by the Dremlins or to contact them.

Was Sara a Dremlin plant? I suspected those were around, though it never made much sense. If they considered us a threat, why keep any of us alive? Of course, I had no answer to this. I didn’t believe anyone had. Moreover, if so, it was too late to save ourselves or our dying planet.

But Sara was a voice. A Spring voice imparting possibilities that I had long ago given up. I waited eagerly for the next town meeting. I sat down and waited until the regional director read through his report. But all I heard that night was his rasping, biting voice, and a film of what had been done to those in other villages who did not heed their code. I allowed myself the opportunity to glance around, but only with my eyes. They knew when you turned your head. Guards positioned on either side of the church aisles in which we were housed for our weekly meetings came over and struck down anyone who turned or nodded off. Some were pulled from the crowd and never returned.

“You will do what you are told or you will be purged. We have made that clear to you and every other member of your mongrel race,” the regional director said in his strange English. The hideous animal was an old Dremlin. His coat was shaggy and unkempt. His talons were horribly long and less aligned with the others than we had seen on younger ones. He stood on the dais, as had an ordained priest only a month before. Only this messenger spoke of destruction and damnation as though he was the representative of the underworld. All vestiges of the church had been stripped from the walls, all signs of God or holiness or religion had been purged from sight. I imagined others believed as I did that those closest to religion and God were on a select list to be extinguished first lest they foment unrest and defiance.

The audience of two hundred or so looked on in muted bewilderment. It was only a year ago that we lived in peace and innocence, unaware of the plot being hatched against our towns and villages, against cities swarming with humanity, against the survival of the planet. Then, in only months since first landing and being welcomed by most of humanity, these small endearing visitors from space, from a planet our scientist called Zegna, for want of a better word, and from a galaxy that we thought devoid of life, as though we possessed the powers of such infinite knowledge or insight, descended from the sky in untold hordes.

The first animals looked like fairy tale-like gremlins one scientist observed. Except when he wrote a real-time internet article about the most important event ever to have impacted humanity, he pressed the wrong letter on his keyboard. Instead of hitting a “g” he struck a “d, “and in one stroke these once cute animals were transformed, and shortly thereafter became the hideous raptors they are today.

“We will be conducting experiments in this town and in nearby towns. No one will be hurt, but there will be some changes in members of your friends and family.”

No one will be hurt. What choice was there? We are all doomed, I thought, no longer searching the crowd for Sara. There probably was no such woman. Sam must have been thinking of someone else. If he knew of her, if she told him she was going to speak to me, to take such a risk in the first place, he would have known.

What does it matter? Tomorrow we will be melted down as the Nazis did the gold teeth of six million Jews a hundred years ago or wind up in a test tube on planet Zegna. I couldn’t recall where the astrophysicists told us the galaxy was that harbored such a malevolent race. We still didn’t know what they wanted from us. Those who were curious enough to ask were now dead. There was no rhyme or reason to their viciousness. There just was, or was not, depending on your point of view. As for myself, I saw no future in my future. Sooner or later, I will do or say something and disappear with the pull of a trigger. I will not be missed. I will simply not be.

I settled into my bed that night no longer thinking about Sara, just the bleakness of our world, of my puny existence. I suspected there was some sort of resistance forming out there. Younger men with more motivation and skills were cloistered in barns and caves around the world. First, they would have to secure themselves then find a way to communicate with others in nearby towns and villages. They would be bold and brave and, I believe, doomed. The Dremlins would have already anticipated this reaction. If they had the ability to sense danger or clandestine activity from across the town center, they might be able to extend it miles and miles from their headquarters. No, we were lichen compared to their intellect and creative superiority. We were no match for their ambition no matter what it was and in what form it was manifested. I glanced outside my window. There was a full moon again. The last time it had appeared, I had asked Sam about Sara.

“Hey Michael, you want another?” a voice barked against a background of music and scrambled words.

I spun around on a tall stool slamming my right elbow into the edge of the bar as my wrist struck the glass of beer I was nursing. A bolt of pain shot up into my shoulder, a splash of beer landed against my right sleeve. I gasped. I must have struck a nerve. The pain was so sharp I felt a tingling in my fingertips. I immediately recognized the bar and most of the patrons staring up in shock at the pictures on the television behind the bartender’s stooped shoulders. It was the afternoon news. The date indicated on the giant television monitor was September 16, 2037. Cameras panned in stony silence as scientists from the Army surrounded what looked like a flying saucer the size of a city block that seemingly had crash-landed in the desert outside of Tempe, Arizona.

“I knew it would happen sooner or later,” the bartender noted.

“I wonder what they’re going to look like?” someone behind me questioned.

“Like small dogs standing on their hind legs,” I offered without thinking.

A smattering of laughter was heard all around followed by some even more bizarre conjecture about what the aliens from outer space would look like. I cleaned off my sleeve and massaged my elbow. I studied my shoes as though I needed more evidence of who I was and where I was. I knew the bar and bartender. I recognized faces in the crowd though none seemed to acknowledge me. I paid my tab and removed myself from the crowded bar, walked into the street, and looked up at the bright blue heavens. It had finally happened. We were not alone. In all our collective arrogance, we were not alone. I had not dreamt it for nothing. I must have known. A police squad car was parked at the curbside near a fire hydrant. I walked over to the blue and white car. Their radio was tuned into the local news. Both officers were listening intently, though not so engrossed so as to ignore my approach. I noticed their bodies stiffened defensively.

“Maybe you can help me officer,” I said. They nodded politely. “I’ve been watching the news about the spaceship and I know what’s going to happen. I saw it all before. I want to tell somebody about it.”

“You just come out of there?” one of them asked.

I turned to the bar. “Yes, but I’m not drunk.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I’m not a crackpot and I’m not drunk. And I can tell you what they’re going to look like. I can tell you what they’re going to do. That might have some value, even if I came out of a bar.”

“With all due respect sir, I’m sure a million other people can also speculate on what they look like.”

“I’m not like a million other people. I saw into the future and I know what they’re going to do.”

“And what’s that?” the same one asked, only this time he was less threatened by me and obviously not taking a word I had to say seriously.

“You know,” I said standing up against the car. “I think I’ll try the newspapers. Maybe they’ll be more receptive.”

They watched me cross the street in front of their car before focusing their attention back to the news. Within an hour all the Dremlins will have emerged from the saucer. Their small demeanor and unstable gait will be instantly endearing to billions worldwide. They would be perceived as unthreatening, an accident from outer space that would change our world forever. Scientists would be ecstatic to have these live samples of other life forms who could communicate with us if even in a rudimentary manner. The fact that they will need our care will throw us off guard. How dangerous could these little creatures be? And their voices, their little squeaky utterances, would sound so much like a human infant, mothers all over the world would feel a maternal instinct towards the furry dog-like misfits. How deviously cunning and manipulative.

I walked six blocks to the offices to the Charleston Times. The usually silent building on the corner of Decatur and Mitchell Streets was a hotbed of nervous fervor. Every window in the building was lit. Camera crews and reporters milled about outside. I had seen this before, or at least been aware of all the commotion when the saucer first landed in what now appeared to be my dream. One of our satellites picked it up coming in from beyond our galaxy. Hundreds of telescopes and sophisticated space probes picked up the incoming ship. Some scientists speculated that it might be something far more ominous, such as an asteroid hurtling towards earth. I thought about that while two reporters rushed from the building and sped away in their car. What could be so important? Didn’t they know what was coming? Didn’t anybody else know what I knew?            All this was for nothing. We were doomed from the beginning. There were no defenses and what made it worse, we wanted so desperately to believe these aliens were friendly and not the kind we’d been exposed to in the movies and television for a hundred years. It just couldn’t be those kind one Hollywood reporter mentioned when he first caught sight of the immature Dremlins. However, if they were so callow how could they pilot their ship halfway across our galaxy?

I made my way past the throng to the city desk on the third floor. Phones were ringing on every desk. Everybody was screaming directions and vital information at each other. Every desk and tabletop was occupied. Every ounce of energy was being expended to cover the most important story since the creation of the earth itself. I looked about as though I was a spectator to my own death. Who would listen to me?

“Have you ever heard of the planet Zegna?” I asked one of the reporters who rushed by so quickly he couldn’t possibly have heard my inquiry. Three police officers were huddled around one of the dozen television sets mounted around the room which looked more like one of the late twentieth century commodities trading pits. There was an unmatched excitement in the air. The world as we knew it, the entire universe, and most importantly the religious leaders of the world were going to have to rethink their history. Apparently, God was hard at work in other planets too.

A young man with a fist full of papers bumped up behind me. He apologized and was courteous enough to ask if he could help me even though it was apparent that he had no real interest in being that patient.

“I want to talk to the editor about the space ship.”

“Right now I don’t think the president himself could get through to the editor,” he said with some pride.

“I have some information about who they are that might be valuable.”

“Who they are?”

I caught myself here, lest I sound as energetic and vested as I believed I was to the two police officers. “Yes.”

“But we haven’t even seen them yet. In fact, we don’t even know if anybody is alive on that ship.”

He was right. “I see your point.”

“You know, why don’t you come back tomorrow? Maybe things will settle down around here so you can find someone you can talk to.”

I took a sudden liking to this young man. He was showing more patience and respect than I had seen or would have expected under these conditions. I also finally realized no one was going to listen to me today, or if I came back tomorrow.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” he said and quickly loped away.

I walked out of the newsroom. I was also too uneasy with what I knew to expose myself to potential ridicule. This incident was going to bring out every crackpot and lunatic on the planet. From evangelists, who would chastise us with the “I told you so’s” to those who believed this marked the end of the world. How was I going to tell them they were right? How could one man warn the world? Moreover, did I really care to? I struggled with this question as the elevator let me off on the ground floor and I wandered into the pandemonium on Decatur, which was taking place in every village and hamlet on earth.

A crowd ten deep surrounded a giant television monitor in one of the windows of the news building. An Army general was approaching the downed saucer. Slowly, a hatch opened at the other side of the gleaming gray spacecraft. Minutes passed until there was discernible movement. Everyone had an idea who or what was going to fill the screen and change our lives. When a small dog-like creature wobbled out into the daylight and fell to its knees a cheer rang out, with women oohing and aahing as the general’s aids rushed to help right the creature.

I knew the rest of the tale. I wandered into a small park and found myself a bench. Across the park, I could see the tall, ornate steeple of the Confederate Army clock tower—a landmark in Charleston. I was born not far from here thirty-eight years ago in a hospital that has long ago been converted into a major office building. Charleston was South Carolina’s oldest city, a major Atlantic coast port and the first city to adopt a historic preservation-zoning ordinance in the country. We had a major military college, internationally renowned arts fair in the Spoleto Festival and one of the East’s most visited tourist attractions. Seven months from now, like a thousand other cities, it would lay in ruins.

We were so desperate to believe, especially the politicians and scientists. After an extensive medical examination, the original group of young Dremlins toured most major capitals of the world. Every politician and important head of state wanted to be photographed with these lovable, if noisy creatures. Even as the animals grew, only the most astute behaviorist noticed that they became less friendly, less forgiving of being petted like tame pets. The scientists, especially the physicists and the Pentagon’s highest-ranking weapon’s wonks, wanted to know everything. The heads of the major religious groups waited patiently. Some suspected they wanted to prolong any interaction with the Dremlins for as long as possible. Official statements were handed out to the press that these denominations were glad no one was actually injured in the landing. Other than that, there was a notable silence from the religious leaders.

A panel of international astronomers and doctors was organized by the United Nations to pose questions to the Dremlins. What was so unusual was that the panel was organized, convened, and ready for their first presentation within six weeks of the landing. What was equally unexpected was that the Dremlins were open and responsive to every question from the location of their planet to the propulsion system of their ship. They invited inspection of their craft to any number of engineers and aeronautical experts. The scientific bounty from these early interactions was heralded as a quantum leap for humanity. A body of knowledge was being amassed at a startling rate, though not as quickly as the Dremlins were growing.

Then of course, there were the cynics who, in this case, were right from the beginning. They urged prudence, but in the face of how the first ship of Dremlins was embraced, their cause was drowned out by the international carnival atmosphere that swept the planet.

“If it hadn’t been for a slight navigational error we would have remained alone in our world, possibly forever,” the chairman of the Latin American Treaty Organization lamented. The most enthusiastic supporters hoped other Dremlins would follow to rescue the survivors of the Tempe Landing, as it was often referred to. They got their wish.

A strange peace settled over me. I stretched out my legs as far as they would go and shook myself like a dog working the muscle spasms out of his awakened body. There was really nothing to do. Nothing for me or anybody that would change the course upon which we were headed. Unless I had some kind of first-hand evidence and could convince someone in authority, we were all going to die. But of course there was none. There was no way to prove what I knew sitting here this bright Fall day. Even I came to question myself. Was it all a dream? No, of course not. Clearly, I had already experienced something that had not yet happened. The memories were too vivid and omnipresent, the facts and circumstances of the past months I had just lived through were all too pure and unwelcoming to be the byproduct of a twisted and corrupt mind.

In my reverie I could easily conjure up images of the earliest Greek wars with Epaminondas, Philip, and Alexander; the great Roman wars with Hannibal, Scipio, and Caesar; the Byzantine and Medieval wars and the French revolution with Napoleon Bonaparte; the European conflicts of the 19th century along with the American Civil War followed by the “War-to-End-All-Wars” and the most horrible Second World War. I can easily recall the wars that infected the Mideast a quarter century ago.

And in every one of these conflicts there was the same strategic territorial or xenophobic rationale. Why was this invasion and subjugation so different? The answer was as obvious as it was opaque.

What would have happened if Hitler had the weapons these monsters possessed? What if Stalin—whose dictates were reportedly responsible for the death of 20,000,000 people—had these weapons at his disposal? The difference here is that there was no one Dremlin leader, no general or politician to which we could forward an appeal for leniency. What they had done, what they intended to do, was so far and away more calamitous, it made two of the most vicious murderers of the twentieth century seem tame by comparison.

“You don’t seem very excited,” the woman said as her dog dragged her to the side of my bench.

I was startled at the sight of the German Shepherd. She had a sweetness about her. I wanted to reach out and pet her head but decided against it. The woman looked familiar, though I was in no condition to press my memory for details. “About what?”

“The space people. The aliens,” she clarified. Her Shepherd sniffed about the tips of my shoes then looked up at me. Her soft bright brown eyes and active expression was so compelling, and yet all I could think was that she was somehow related to those who were going to destroy us. “A spaceship landed outside of Tempe, Arizona.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.”

“My goodness, you seem so detached.”

There was a freedom about my attitude that even I was aware of. I was also aware of the number of dogs in the park. It gave me a terribly unsettled feeling. “I guess I am.”

“How can you not be excited?” she said tightening the leash around her hand and falling onto the bench. “The president was on television trying to reassure the nation.”

Thank goodness he wasn’t trying to get through to the editors at the Charleston Times. “I guess I missed it.” I began to massage my right elbow. It was quite sore and a little stiff. Tomorrow it was going to be a lot more tender. By next Spring, I will look back on this bruise as a very temporary and inconsequential inconvenience. By next Summer, who knows?

“He was so confident. It’ll be on again. You’ll catch it.”

“Was he reassuring?”

“Yes. Very.”

“That’s important.”

She straightened her hair. She was wearing baggy jeans overalls over a baggy white sweater. She was an inch or two taller than I was. Her face had an open sharpness about it as though she would listen but would not be easily convinced. “I’ll catch him later.”

“Well, Jillian here is really interested in the spaceship, aren’t you honey?” she said bending down to nuzzle her cheek against her dog.

“That’s a beautiful animal you have there.”

“That’s my best friend. She’s been with me for three years. She’s my lucky charm.”

“Have you ever heard of the planet Zegna?”

“No. Can’t say as I have. But you should know, I’m not one for science.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a fitness instructor. I have my own gym in North Charleston. I’m just visiting my sister over on McMurtree.”

The young woman was thin, athletic, the very personification of health, and if I may say so, a beauty. She was pretty in a soft, mellow way. Her looks weren’t as flagrant as so many young women’s were these days. From her style and grace, I imagined her to be somewhat of a throwback to a kinder, gentler era. “My name is Michael Denner.”

“I’m Jennifer Winslow. Friends call me Jenny. And of course, you already know Jillian here.”

If I told her what I knew she would nod politely and run for the bushes with her dog yelping at her heels. I would expect that of anybody. “Pretty name.”

“Why thank you. No one ever said that to me, not in just that way.”

“I can assure you, it was meant as a compliment.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Isn’t McMurtree behind the Confederate clock tower?”

“Yes. It’s one of my sister’s favorite places.”

“I love that memorial too.” The Confederate tower held out more than just the momentary flicker of time to me. It was a destination. The symbol of what I perceived could be my resting place if I decided to change my history.

“How come you’re not glued to a television set?”

“How come you aren’t?”

“If you’ve ever had a pet, you know their needs come first.” Jillian looked around the park with a curious eagerness.

I tried to assemble the details of my day before being shocked out of my reverie in the bar. How did I get there in the middle of the afternoon? The last time I was in a bar, I was watching the opening game of pre-season professional football in August with friends. I couldn’t recall anything before slamming my elbow. Hard as I tried, I seemed to have no past and if that was correct, no future either.

“Jennifer, did you ever share a secret with a stranger?”

She glanced around the park. Nearly everybody was listening to a pocket radio or collecting in small clumps discussing the news that had rocked the world. “What do you have in mind Michael Denner?”

“Well Jennifer, I’ll tell you. Firstly, the game works best when played by total strangers.”

“Even those who have shared a park bench together?”

“Those are the best kind.”

“Oh, this sounds really exciting, and please, it’s Jenny.”

“It’s simple Jenny. You tell me something that you’ve been dying to confess to someone, knowing that it will mean nothing in particular to me, but it will relieve you of the burden of holding onto it by yourself.”

“Strangers meeting on a train share a little part of themselves and then move on. No strings. No consequences.” She patted Jillian who quickly became less obstreperous. She continued to stroke her forehead until the dog’s energy was calmed. “Sounds mysterious.”

“You’re free to walk away anytime you feel so inclined. And I can do the same.”

“But you wouldn’t, because I think you want to tell me something really important to you. Am I right?”

“You’re much more than a gym teacher, Jenny.”

“And you look like you’re about to burst unless you don’t get something off your chest.”

“That obvious, is it?”

“Sorry, but it is to me.”

“It’s important to me that you trust what I say and there is no way for me to say what I have to say without possibly frightening you.”

“Me in particular or to anybody you want to tell your secret?”

“Oh, anybody.”

“Good. I just don’t want to be the object of a stranger’s secret.”

The use of the word “stranger” bothered me, then again so did the word “suitable.” “That’s not what this is about.”

“Well, if you ever wanted to get my curiosity going, you’ve succeeded.”

“I will ask you for one thing.”

“Which is?”

I pulled back from her. “That you give me enough time for me to finish my story even if you want to leave before it’s over.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” She sounded guarded now. Her light, frothy manner had dissolved into a heightened hesitation.

“I know. It’s something that I shouldn’t have asked of you,” I said crossing my arms across my chest. “Well, if you’re game, so am I.”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve had enough.”

“Fair enough,” I said and began. The tale of the hounds of Zegna was told as I had witnessed it. I left out no detail, no unpleasantry bound to frighten or sicken. I spoke over the course of an hour with clarity of detail that had eluded me all my life. I spoke from the heart and when I was finished there was a period of time when all that moved were Jillian’s attentive ears. If Jennifer had been one of my pupils she would have never walked out of class when the bell rang.

“How would you feel Michael, if a stranger told you that story?”

“As disbelieving as you probably are,” I answered.

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I think you would have been better served if I had said nothing.”

“I don’t know,” she said and, with a gush of air that surely emptied her lungs, added, “My God, if you’re right!”

“There is no doubt in my mind.”

“I can see that,” she said staring down at Jillian.

“But you know, what does it all matter?”

“If someone told you that you had less than half a year before your life would change for the worse and forever; well, that would certainly matter.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“It’s like being told by a doctor that you only have four or five months to live and after that everything you’ve known and come to rely upon will start to collapse all around you. Now what do I do?”

She was right. “I told you something that might help you.”

“But what if I believe you and don’t want to be helped?”

“Then I have done you a terrible disservice.” I had told her more than my secret. I had given her the power to adjust her life before it ended, but she would have preferred to be kept in the dark. I had given her a chance to prepare. And in saying what I had said, gave myself the same gift. Except that it seemed to mean more to her than to me. “You know if you tell anybody else they’re going to think you’re crazy and you might suspect I am.”

“I’ve been thinking about my mother in Pittsburgh. I have other relatives there and so many friends. My God. Every city is going to perish?”

“Every large city on the face of this planet is going to be incinerated in the first week. There is no defense. Thousands of smaller villages and the remnants of smaller communities like this are going to be kept alive but I don’t know why.”

“Just like that?”

“Nearly six billion people gone in less than two months. Most of modern civilization lost in a vapor. I lived through it Jennifer. I know what it’s like.”

A shadow descended upon this pretty young girl. I was overtaken by pangs of guilt. I didn’t have to say what I said, and yet I desperately needed to talk to somebody. I had friends, but in this case, unusual as it was, I really was more comfortable with a complete stranger. I thought a moment about the possibility of her and I meeting again, but it was apparent that what I had told her needed to be digested, and not in the company of the messenger. We both had to prepare for what was about to descend upon us.

“Jennifer?” I asked bringing her back from wherever it was that she had spent the last few moments.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just thinking about my baby brother. He just finished up his residency in medical school in California. We’re all so proud of him. He worked so hard to get what he has, and now it’s all for nothing.”

At that moment, I didn’t want this girl to believe me. Maybe not one word of what I had said. “He should know too.”

“I don’t feel well, Michael,” she said getting to her feet. “I think I should go now. I don’t mean to dispute what you’ve said but, you know it’s very hard to believe.”

“Impossible actually. I really didn’t expect you to believe me, and I’m not going to share my story with anybody else. I don’t need to wind up in some sanitarium and miss out on the death of civilization.”

“That sounds sick.”

“What else is there left but to be a credible witness to the destruction? What would you do?”
“Kill myself. Maybe.”

“I thought of that. And it may come to that. But for now I have time. Not a lot. You have time too. If you have loved ones go to them.”

“Then I would have to leave Charleston. Maybe go to the countryside where it is safer?”

“Just don’t forget to take Jillian with you.”

She came to my side and softly kissed my cheek. “Thank you. I mean it. If I didn’t believe you before, I do now.”

“Why?”

“If you had any intentions other than honorable you wouldn’t have wanted me to leave. You’re a good man, Michael Denner.”

I thought about asking her to call me Mickey, just once, but it was really too late for that. “Sometimes I am.”

“Did you ever think of contacting Sam Levin?” she asked and got up.

“No. No, in fact I hadn’t.”

“You might try.”

“You know, that’s a great idea. I have the time and he probably lives somewhere around here.”

“Good luck.”

“You too,” I said. Jennifer loosened the dog leash. Jillian turned and gave me one last playful glance before they disappeared around a thicket of bushes.

I spent the rest of the day in the park, more relaxed and renewed than I could recall. The pulse of people around me picked up with each new interaction with the aliens. By the time I got home, every channel was carrying the same story.

ALIEN CRAFT CRASH-LANDS IN THE UNITED STATES. AMERICA AND REST OF WORLD REACHES OUT TO EMBRACE INHABITANTS OF ANOTHER PLANET LOST IN SPACE.

How naive. How completely typical of our race, I thought. They would soon learn. They would witness the spectacle on television as reports came in from a smattering of cities. Ships landing, supposedly to locate the first one that had fallen off course. By the time their search was completed two dozen ships would have canvassed most of the earth’s surface. Satellites picked up their movement in our atmosphere but since we could not communicate with them, we could only wait. And we did. And as we did, we became more comfortable with those first dozen Dremlins. It all seemed so innocent, so much of what we all wanted to happen.

They would learn. First about the howling in the night, then all day long. They would learn not to look or hear and most importantly not to listen to the rumors of what these creatures were living off of. Smaller animals, some said. Rats and mice, others said with a note of appreciation. Dogs and cats was the most common speculation. And through it all, no one recognized a flesh eater for what it was.

I watched attentively on my television until I could no longer keep my eyes open. I recalled every event that took place from the first encounter to the first military interaction when the first warning was given and the first human life was taken.

I turned to the calendar on my kitchen wall. I had five months, maybe a little more before the purge began. I would live my life to the fullest in that time. I would take deep breaths, walk up to strangers, and tell them how important it was to live life to the fullest.

I would play in the park. I would divest myself of all my savings and travel and when my meager wealth was gone, go into debt until the very end. I would sing and dance and try to find someone who believed me and in our closeness share the need to wring every ounce of life out of the time remaining.

I would live as if there were no tomorrow, if only because I knew that there wasn’t.

 

– end –

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