The Summer Experiment (10 page)

The Denial

T
he
next
thing
the
four
men
knew, they were back onshore at their campsite. They all felt exhausted and decided to sleep for the night. The large fire they had made only minutes previous was now just a pile of burnt embers. Without much conversation following the unusual incident which just took place, the men went to sleep. The next morning, they said little of the incident and packed their belongings to move to a new campsite.

I was back on Wikipedia, reading up on the Allagash Abductions. A full week had passed and yet Johnny, Billy, Marilee, and I had said nothing about what happened on Peterson's Mountain the night I dressed up as Calley's ghost. The night we hid in the cave. The night of the bright light that found us. You'd think someone would say, “Hey, remember that weird spaceship we saw? You know, the one that chased Johnny?” But no. It was as if something had been erased from our brains. I mean, I know we all remembered seeing it. Just as the four men from Vermont remembered seeing a ball of light. It's what happened
afterward
that I wanted to discuss. How else could we get to the bottom of things? But everything seemed to have quieted down all over town, not just with the four of us. No more sightings were mentioned and the strange lights everyone had been seeing had, well, imploded. Or they were invisible to us.

After
psychiatric
examinations, all four men were deemed to be mentally stable and they all passed lie detector tests. In 1988, out of curiosity, Jim Weiner attended a UFO conference hosted by Raymond Fowler. Fowler was excited about Jim's story, especially the fact that it was a multiple-witness occurrence. Fowler suggested to Jim that he and the others undergo hypnosis. After the sessions, it was revealed that all four men had memories of being abducted.

Well, we four would also be a multiple-witness deal if the other three would just talk about it. I didn't want to read on. I knew what it said, anyway. The examinations. Those hair and skin samples.

I heard the rooster crow. An instant message from Marilee.

MeMarilee:
Want to go to Cramer's for an ice cream?

I quickly typed back:

AllagashRobbie:
No, but I want to talk about what happened on Peterson's Mountain.

The rooster crowed again.

MeMarilee:
We could have broken our necks.

My sound effect is a horse whinny. I imagined Marilee hearing it over at her house as I typed back:

AllagashRobbie:
I want to talk about it! ASAP!!!!

When there was no response after twenty minutes, I shut my computer off. Out in the hallway, I met Johnny. He had just gotten out of the shower and was pulling on a clean T-shirt. I stepped in front of him, blocking his way to the stairs.

“Were we abducted on Peterson's Mountain?” I asked. It doesn't get any more to-the-point than that. At first, Johnny looked nervous, but in no time he was flashing his usual crooked grin.

“You crazy?” he asked. “If they took one, they'd take us all, right?”

“Right,” I said. Absolutely. We had
all
lost two hours on that mountain. So how did that happen? And why was I the only one concerned?

“Well, there's your answer,” said Johnny. “They'd be looking for intelligent life, right?”

“Most likely.” I figured they would be examining all kinds of animals and probably even plants. I mean, who would notice if a tree was abducted from the Allagash wilderness?

“If they're looking for intelligent life, why would they take a blond?”

Oh, dude. Not the dumb blond joke. Get a new act, Johnny. He was being mean again, and so soon into our bonding, or whatever that was. My disappointment must have shown on my face because Johnny quickly tousled my hair.

“Let it be, Robbie,” he said. “It's over and done with. I gotta go. Uncle Horace is picking me up in ten minutes.” He was down the stairs before I could even reply.

In the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of orange juice. Mom came in with a bag of groceries and started putting them away.

“Do you believe in aliens?” I asked. “You know, beings that inhabit other planets?”

Mom gave me a sharp look. I knew it was because Tina was there, standing next to her and eating a Popsicle. Tina is shy in front of the milkman and the mailman. Spacemen would really terrify her.

“No, I don't believe in aliens,” Mom said. “And now that things have finally quieted down, I don't want to hear about them, either.”

Have you ever seen a photograph of an ostrich with its head in the sand? No, you haven't, because it's a myth that the bird does that when it senses danger. But if it did, I'd be living in a family of ostriches. Even my best friend had her head in the sand.

“What if they walk among us?” I asked. Tina had followed Maxwell into the living room. “What if Johnny and I are not really your children but were put here by aliens?”

“That I would almost believe,” said Mom, “if my labor pains hadn't hurt so much.”

***

I saw Dad trimming the hedges in the yard so I went out to pretend I was there to help him. He looked up and smiled when he saw me.

“How's my girl?”

“Dad, do you believe in aliens?” I asked. “Is there life on other planets?”

He stopped trimming to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

“There's a good chance, I suppose,” he said, “what with all the stars out there that are like our own sun. Stars with planets of their own. But I doubt we'll know the answer in our lifetime, Roberta. Hand me that soda.”

I handed him a can of Pepsi that had turned warm in the sun. Was it so wrong to want answers now, in my lifetime? I was never big on waiting.

“Where does that leave God?” I had to ask it. I waited as Dad finished his soda and handed me the can. Five cents refund and he didn't have to remind me.

“Well,” Dad said, as he went back to clipping, “if there is life on other planets, then maybe God created them too. It's just a bigger neighborhood out there than we realized, that's all.”

That wasn't a bad answer. But I knew I had questions that even my dad would furrow his brow over. And that's what he did when I asked my next one.

“If there are UFOs flying over Earth, why don't they land and make themselves known? Why don't they share their technology with us?”

After the furrow came and went, Dad said, “Well, maybe they are so intelligent that we're like ants to them. You don't sit and talk to ants, do you, Robbie? Or, on the other hand, maybe they've seen MTV.”

***

I gave up. In the front yard, Billy Ferguson was just pulling in on his bicycle. He popped down the kickstand and turned to look at me.

“Johnny here?” he asked. What an opportunity. Johnny had gone to Caribou with Uncle Horace for the day.

“He won't be back until this afternoon. Want to sit on the swing and talk?”

Billy looked nervous. Like I might grab him, pin him down, and kiss him to death. But we sat on the swing and Billy pushed us in motion with a foot. After we went back and forth, back and forth, he seemed more comfortable. That's when he said it.

“Maybe we can go four-wheeling sometime. Or ride our bikes over to Cramer's for an ice cream.”

You would think, wouldn't you, that I'd smile when I heard this? Or maybe
swoon,
which is a word I picked up from one of Mom's old black-and-white movies. I think it means “to faint.” I could have even gulped. But, no. Here's what I did. First, I blushed, which is something I wish I could control. I hate a blush. And being blond doesn't help hide it, let me assure you. Second, I was so nervous at what Billy just said that I simply blurted out my big question.

“What do you think happened on Peterson's Mountain the other night?”

You'd have thought I just clobbered him on the head with a poturn. His foot stopped the swing. He jumped off and went to his bike. He kicked up his stand and jumped on the seat. “I gotta go.”

I watched until he disappeared down the road, an ostrich riding a bike. I had to hope that in the future I'd learn to be more careful. That way, maybe my boyfriends wouldn't run from me.

***

There was one person I thought might talk to me. I couldn't take the four-wheeler on the main highway, so I got out my bike, put on my helmet, and told Mom I'd be back in time for supper. I set off pedaling down through the modest gathering of houses, past the one grocery store and the small café, past the school and the police station, past the gas station and movie rentals, past the post office and the library, and then that was it. Town was over and I was pedaling out south into the “suburbs,” so to speak.

I love my bicycle. Mosquitoes and blackflies can't catch you on a bike or a four-wheeler, which is a major perk. Manufacturers should put that in their advertisements:
This
Schwinn
Girl's Ranger bicycle is light blue, has knobby tires for traction, is mosquito-proof, and with its twenty-one gears can easily outrun blackflies.
Honestly, I think they would sell more bikes in the northern states.

I pulled into Sheriff Mallory's driveway and braked. As I was leaning my bike against his porch railing, the door opened and there was the sheriff. Or the
former
sheriff. He looked different without his uniform. He looked just like anybody's grandpa, in tan slacks and a white cotton shirt.

“Well, look what the wind blew in,” he said, and beckoned for me to come sit in one of Mrs. Mallory's big rocking chairs on the front porch.

“Thanks, Sheriff Mallory,” I said. “Well, Mr. Mallory.”

He smiled sadly and nodded.

“It sure seems strange not to be the sheriff anymore,” he said, and handed me a stick of gum. “But Harold will be a fine sheriff. He was an interesting deputy, I can say that much.”

“He won't last a month, and you know it,” I said. This made him smile. He likes me, Mr. Mallory does. I know because I heard him telling my dad once at a school function. “I sure get a kick out of that girl of yours,” he said. “It's like talking to a miniature adult.”

“Well, let's just hope he doesn't do too much damage until a new sheriff is voted in,” said Mr. Mallory. “You can call me Stanley now that I'm no longer with the department.”

“I would like to know, Stanley, what you really saw on Highway 42 that night,” I said. “I want to know because I think I saw it too.”

Stanley Mallory looked me in the eye, steady and sure. He sighed as he ran a hand through this thinning hair. He looked tired. No wonder. He'd been through a lot lately. Our mayor wasn't an easy guy to deal with. So if he and the chamber were putting a vise grip on our sheriff, as everyone expected, it couldn't be fun.

“I didn't see anything unusual,” he said. “Thinking back on it, I'd say it was several of those low-flying planes from the base in Burlington, Vermont. You've seen them, haven't you, Roberta?”

Yes, I'd seen them often. They flew over during the day and they looked like airplanes. So I told Stanley what
I'd
seen. I even started with the ghost prank I was hoping to pull on Johnny, to explain what we were doing on Peterson's Mountain so late at night. Then I told him about Johnny signaling to the craft, and how we flew down the mountainside to the cave.

“The light that shone in on us was so bright we couldn't look at it,” I said. “No way was that Johnny's four-wheeler.”

Stanley Mallory sat in his rocking chair and stared out at his mailbox. It had two red cardinals on it, their feet grasping a brown twig. I figured Emma Mallory had painted it herself. She used to teach art at the high school and still gives lessons.

“That's quite a story,” said Stanley.

“There's more,” I said. “It seemed like just a second later that we were sitting there on our machines, Johnny too, at the mouth of the cave.” I paused, since it still scared me to think about it. “But it was really two hours later.”

“That's sure a wild tale, Roberta,” Stanley said.

“Wild and true,” I noted. “But you saw it too, didn't you?”

Stanley waited a bit before he replied.

“I saw a bunch of airplanes. Those jets fly like the dickens.”

“What about the bright light that lit up Paul Ellory's dairy farm? It was so bright you could see Mr. Ellory's cows and his red tractor and his two silos. You said so yourself.”

“It had been a long night,” said Stanley. “I was tired, and when your eyes get tired they see all sorts of things.”

We sat in our rockers, saying nothing. Cars and pickups and trucks went back and forth on the main road. I was getting my Tooth Fairy feeling again, no doubt about it.

“I'm on a team all by myself,” I said finally. “I can't even get Johnny and Marilee and Billy to admit what they saw that night.”

I stood up and shook Stanley's hand.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Mallory,” I said. I didn't feel like calling him Stanley anymore. I was too disappointed in him.

“I'm sorry, Roberta,” said Mr. Mallory from his rocker on the porch. I was just kicking up the stand on my bike. “But I gotta think of our town. I gotta put Allagash first. One day, when you're older, you'll understand.”

“I'd like to understand before I turn twelve,” I said. “See ya, Mr. Mallory.”

The Siren

The next day started off with a bang. There was some breaking news, and by this I mean
glass
breaking. Apparently Henry Horton Harris Helmsby, in his great attempt to join two vegetables that had been happy living apart for a few hundred years, blew up his mother's greenhouse. Glass flew so far that some of it ended up on Marilee's lawn. Poturns littered the road in front of Henry's house, and now Maggie Dunn's chickens were pecking at the pieces and in danger of being flattened by pulp trucks.

The incident was important enough that at last Marilee e-mailed me. Attached to her e-mail was a photo of shards of glass sticking out of her mother's rosebush. Another photo was taken from her bedroom window and was of the greenhouse itself, which now looked like a giant mushroom had exploded. The trouble with Henry was that he had about three really bad ideas until he came up with a brilliant one. And that's what worried me. In the past, he had always rooted up a gem in time for the fair. Such as the potato battery that could power a digital clock. Or the solar oven made inside an oatmeal box that could fry an egg. And he always won.

I went on our school's Facebook page and saw a photo of Henry. It was posted by Mrs. Dionne, our science teacher, in the hopes that his classmates would offer him their condolences. So far, only Mrs. Dionne had posted anything.
Get
well
soon, Henry
, was all her message said. And then Henry's little sister, Pearl, had posted something too.
My
new
Barbie
doll
is
missing! It better not be because of
you,
Henry!
I didn't even want to remember the time Henry got involved with a Barbie doll project. It had to do with Barbie's fibers. Or rather the synthetic fibers her hair is made from. But I'll save that story for later when I have the stomach to tell it.

I guess Henry's mother took the photo of him. His cucumber face was all wrapped up in a white bandage, enough that just his beady eyes were peering out. I figured if you undid the bandage, the face beneath would now look like a toasted Tootsie Roll. Below the photo, Henry had offered these words of wisdom for the world:
This
accident
will
only
make
me
stronger. I suspect that great botanical minds before me have also blown up their moms' greenhouses. If the
Brassica
family
does
not
wish
to
join
the
Solanum
family, so be it.
You'd think he was the godfather of the Mafia or something, instead of a nerdy kid trying to win the science fair.
Once
healed, I shall be back on track with a much bigger and much more important project!

Darn. For a minute there, I thought the Bunsen burner was on
my
team.

***

Marilee was obviously willing to talk to me about Henry, but not Peterson's Mountain. After lying on my bed for two more hours and staring at the light fixture on my ceiling, I'd had it. I hoped the horse would whinny so loud that Marilee's bedroom windows would rattle.

AllagashRobbie:
NEVER MIND ABOUT HENRY!

AllagashRobbie:
I WANT TO TALK AND I WANT TO TALK NOW! AND YOU KNOW ABOUT WHAT!!

The rooster sounded almost scared when it crowed.

MeMarilee:
Be right over.

When she arrived, Marilee sat on the end of my bed, wearing her black Nikes instead of those ugly red sneakers.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked. She looked pale.

“Only the truth,” I answered.

“Okay, I saw a big, big ship of some kind. It was huge. It had lights under it. It chased Johnny. The light that shone in the cave wasn't a four-wheeler. It had to be that thing in the sky. We lost two hours of time. Satisfied?”

“Finally,” I said, and let out a sigh of relief.

“I think this calls for an ice cream,” said Marilee.

Marilee and I have a philosophy about ice cream. It's good for the brain. We might even have our brains preserved after we die and then donated to science. But we'll only sign the papers if our brains are frozen in ice cream.

***

At Flagg's Grocery we ran into two girls from our class, Lydia and Sydni. The four of us bought our ice creams and were sitting next to our bikes on the grassy hill by the library when we heard a siren in the distance. The thing about a siren in a small town like ours is that it gets your attention right away. In the city, I figure people hear sirens all day long and don't pay any attention since there are hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people there. But in a town like Allagash, a siren means that someone you know is in trouble.

Sometimes, although it's rare, they're in trouble with the law and that siren is blue and on the top of a police car. But most of the time it's red and on the top of an ambulance. And it's coming to pick up a neighbor or a family member. So it's a scary sound until the ambulance stops at someone's house or at the nursing home, and then telephones ring all over town and you finally have an answer as to who it's for. We watched in awed silence as the red light flew past us and disappeared around the corner at Flagg's Grocery.

“I bet it's for Mr. Kingsland,” Lydia said. “Mom said the hospital sent him home too soon, especially since it's pneumonia he has and he's almost ninety.”

“Or it could be for Della's mother,” said Sydney. “She's been sick for some time now.”

“Or maybe Joey Wallace made another fake phone call,” said Marilee. It was known all over town that Joey would get bored now and then and start phoning up places he shouldn't. Sometimes he would call Flagg's Grocery store and ask the owner if he had pigs' feet. When Bill Flagg said yes, that he did indeed have them, Joey would shout, “Well, put on shoes and no one will ever know it!”

“Maybe Freddy jumped off his dad's barn again,” I said. “Or the schoolhouse roof.” Joey Wallace had once bet Freddy Goble a dollar that he didn't dare jump off his father's barn. Freddy
did
dare and he broke an ankle in doing so. But he got his dollar before he limped into the back of the ambulance, which had been called since Freddy also knocked himself out when he hit the ground and people weren't sure for a time if he was still alive. Just as the ambulance was pulling up next to the barn, Freddy sat up and asked for his dollar.

Then Joey gave him five dollars to jump off the school building, which was a lot higher than the barn. Freddy broke both ankles in that jump and also cracked his funny bone, which wasn't funny at all, especially to his mother. But, businessman that he was, Freddy made four more dollars than with the barn jump. So when we heard the ambulance, we always hoped that it might be Joey Wallace or Freddy Goble behind it. That meant no one was sick or dying, unless it might be Freddy jumping from the bridge or parachuting out of an airplane.

We were just finishing our ice cream cones when the ambulance came roaring back down the road, headed to the hospital in Fort Kent. When an ambulance goes by, I always feel like maybe I should put my hand across my heart or something, the way folks here do when a hearse goes by with a dearly beloved. And this time, I
really
felt that way and I wasn't sure why. I noticed the outline of a person in the back, leaning over what was probably a patient on a stretcher. Something seemed familiar about that silhouette. But I figured it might be Freddy's mom and maybe he'd broken both his legs this time. Possibly even his neck.

I was wrong. Dead wrong. But I didn't know that as Johnny biked by and I decided to follow my brother home. I said, “See ya later,” to Marilee and Sydni and Lydia as I got back on my bike and kicked up my stand.

Funny how just the sound of a siren can change your life forever.