Gene Doucette: The Spaceship Next Door

On the other hand, a journalist was someone who would stop and talk to the trailer city collective. That was much more important than any president.

“Well keep it to yourself anyway,” Sam said. “No idea if people are even supposed to know.”

“A retrospective, huh?”

“I think so. Probably just talk to the usuals. Billy Pederson and everyone.”

“Right.”

There were about a dozen people from Sorrow Falls who were legitimately famous. Billy was one of them, but there was also the sheriff and his deputies, the fire chief, the guy who drove the ambulance that day, the owners of the land adjacent to the ship, and one or two other people who had come about their fame honestly, which was to say they happened to be in the right place at the right time and this could be verified independently. A dozen other people were famous for the opposite reason: they claimed to be somewhere they weren’t, or do something they hadn’t done. They achieved a temporary fame, which devolved into a public shaming. Annie knew a couple of them, and didn’t find them to be all that regretful. Fame was the be-all and end-all for some folks.

What the famous people of Sorrow Falls had in common was direct interaction with the alien spacecraft. The early days before the army came in with their military cordon and their giant fence, and daily bomber runs over the no-fly zone above, and helicopter fly-by’s, and so on, were tumultuous. A lot of people had an opportunity to see the ship up close. Those that did eventually became famous for it, even if they had nothing to say.

“Probably looking for some story nobody’s told yet,” Sam said. “As you do. Pretty much no stories left, though, huh? Not until it does something.”

“Yeah, probably not,” she said. “But he’s getting a close-up of the ship, huh?”

“So I’m told.”

“That’s a little unusual, right? When was the last time that happened?”

Sam shrugged. “I guess. I don’t think about it much. Maybe he was just the first to ask in a while.”

“Maybe. Well, I gotta run, but thanks for the info. Now I know what I’m doing with my day.”

Sam laughed. “You’re going to track down the one reporter in Sorrow Falls in the next two hours?”

“Oh, I won’t need two hours. C’mon, Sam, who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Fine, well when you do find him, keep my name out of it.”

She kicked her leg over the bike and pointed it toward town. “Don’t worry, soldier. I always protect my informants.”

The reporter was a skinny white guy with the kind of glasses people who lived in cities tended to wear: they had almost no frames to them and looked too small to render the entire world on the other side of the eyeballs crisp for the owner of those eyeballs.

He appeared to have made a conscious effort to look rugged, countrified or otherwise non- other to the locals of Sorrow Falls, but couldn’t entirely pull it off. One reason for this was pretty simple: nobody in town dressed like he was dressed. People from the city didn’t understand that people living outside of the city didn’t really have a different style, or if they did it wasn’t a style you could arrive at by mimicking the fashion choices from a pickup truck commercial.

He had a red flannel shirt and jeans—the jeans were unquestionably brand-new, but he did make an effort to buy the kind that came pre-distressed—and tan leather hiking boots.

Annie had spent her entire life in Sorrow Falls, and the only people she’d ever seen dressed this way were the ones coming from outside of town and trying to fit in. It said “farmer” to a certain group of people who had never farmed.

He was in good company. The president dressed this way when he visited too. So had the French ambassador, although in his case he probably thought all Americans dressed like this: he wore a cowboy hat with it. Annie had to think for a while before she could come up with a visiting dignitary who hadn’t worn the outfit. The only two that came to mind was the vice president (a woman, who also had decent fashion sense) and the Dalai Lama.

The reporter was sitting alone in a booth in the back of Joanne’s Diner, typing at a modest pace on a laptop that would have been a spiral notebook only a few years earlier. He checked his watch every couple of minutes, and looked up every time the bell above the door announced someone’s entry or exit.

“How long’s he been here?” Annie asked Beth. Beth was four years older than Annie, and a member of the diner’s ownership family, the Welds. She was also the closest thing Annie had to an older sister, largely because the Welds were in the habit of adopting locals who helped out in the diner, and everyone was in the habit of adopting Annie. It was a popular local tradition.

The only sign to ever grace the diner was one that said DINER on it, but everyone called it Joanne’s. This was sort of funny for anybody familiar with the Welds, because nobody in the family was, or had ever been, named Joanne. It was true that for about fifteen years in the late middle period of the Twentieth century, the diner employed a waitress who called herself Joan, and it was also true that Joan was a very popular lady in the way some ladies could be at times (Annie took this to mean she had large breasts, but Beth had a much more salacious interpretation) and so it was very possible “the Diner” became “Joan’s Diner” and later—because that ‘s’ and ‘d’ in the makeshift title was awkward when shoved together like that—it became “Joanne’s Diner” before finally becoming “Joanne’s”. It was equally possible there was another explanation, for which no adequate historical record existed. What remained true was that there was no Joanne in the establishment, and it did not appear there ever had been.

It was a local tradition, therefore, to tell intrepid reporters who had just arrived that they absolutely must A: eat at Joanne’s, and B: ask to speak to Joanne, as she had all the best information.

It was an entertaining prank, and also served the important purpose of notifying locals when someone contributing to the official record was in the vicinity. For while there was no Joanne, her diner was the closest thing to an information hub the town had.

“About an hour. Don’t know who he’s waiting on.”

“His escort, probably,” Annie said. “He’s going to see the ship.”

Beth flexed an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

Annie shrugged, which wasn’t an answer, but it also sort of was. Annie knew people and people told her things. It was just how things were. If anyone in town knew that, it was Beth.

“Well, if that’s true he must be more important than he looks,” Beth said.

“Maybe. What do important people look like? I can never tell.”

Annie put down the half full buss pan she was ostensibly supposed to be transporting to the back of the diner. There was an industrial-sized dishwashing machine in back made by a company called Hobart that everyone just called Bart. Bart was always hungry and always complaining and occasionally—more often than not of late—needed a visit from a specialist, because Bart was getting old. There were a not inconsequential number of customers who believed there was a human named Bart in the back, who was perhaps chained there and not permitted to leave.

The breakfast rushes came in shifts, and this was a moment between those shifts, so Annie had already fed Bart.

She grabbed a coffee urn and headed to the back of the diner, winking at Beth as she went.

“Refill?” she asked, to the journo.

“No thanks,” he said, not looking up. She thought he looked younger up close, like just-out-of-college young. That didn’t make a lot of sense contextualized with his opportunity to see the ship up close, though. She expected a more seasoned individual.