Stephen Dixon - Letters to Kevin

I looked through all the windows. The furniture was gone. Not even a curtain rod remained. I checked the mailbox to see if you might have left a note for me where you had gone. The box was stacked with mail. Included were all the letters I had written to you since I first tried to call and then got locked inside a telephone booth in New York a long time ago. I went next door. Your neighbor there, Mrs. Spinks, said you and your mom moved two months ago and left no forwarding address. “Surely someone’s got to know where they went,” I said. “I’ve come a long ways. Gone through a swarm of troubles to get here. It’s just not like Kev to slip off for even a few weeks’ vacation without first writing to let me in on his plans.” “Something very odd did happen,” she said. “Mr. Spinks and I haven’t told the story to anyone for a while now, as everyone we told it to thought we’d gone out of our minds. You see, Mr. Foy, Kevin and his mother didn’t move out of their house as plain ordinary folks would. You know: renting or selling their house and then filling a moving van with their belongings and getting in their car the last day and waving goodbye to their neighbors as they drove away. Oh no. Nothing was ever done about selling or renting the house, and you can see how the weeds have taken over and given our street a bad name. And as for their leaving. Well, they had to send all their belongings off by spaceship a week before they and their dog Saybean took off for space themselves.” “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You see? Nobody believes us. But do you want to hear what happened to them or not?” and I told her I did. “Kevin used to drop by here quite often. We loved seeing him, as he was always so cheerful and bright. But one day, when I’m making him an ice-cream cone out of the freezer, he says to me that his best friend at school is a glouter flace gerson. ‘A what?’ I said, and he says ‘A glouter flace gerson. That’s an outer space person in the Giffiggof language they speak in their country on the planet my friend comes from.’ “Then he says that his friend and his family have been living in California for five years. Working as industrial spies here for their country, which is why they look, speak and dress like us earth people when they’re on the outside. But when they’re inside their homes, they act and look much differently than us. And also speak this different language, where all the words start off with G’s and F’s. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in their house and gotten so close to them that they now think of me as their brother and son.’ “I asked where he’d heard such a story. He said ‘It isn’t a story.’ And that very evening he was going to introduce his glouter flace griend and his griend’s farents to his fom. “As you can imagine, I quickly forgot about it. To me, it was only another wild concoction that Kevin’s been entertaining us with for years and which we loved him for. But the next week, when I’m making him an ice-cream float on our soda fountain downstairs, he says how his mother has fotten griendly with these flace geeple. How she’s even glinking of their both glying off with these geeple in a flace glip to their country on that other flanet, when the flace gamily’s spy tour of guty on gearth is gup. “I said ‘Kevin, you ought to be writing science fiction for children with your imagination. Or telling these tales to an olderperson writer, so she can type them up and try and get them published for you. Not that I don’t love listening to you, dear. It’s only that you can’t expect me to believe every single word.’ “He shrugged his shoulders and said ‘If we do go, Mrs. Spinks, I’ll be sure to drop over to say goodbye to you and Mr. Spinks, as you’ve both been real kind to me.’ I told him what a mature thing that was for a young boy to be saying, and he just sucked up his soda and left with his dog.

“I still didn’t think anything of his stories till a few nights later when I was awakened by a crackling and humming noise outside. I looked out our bedroom window and saw a contraption such as I’ve never seen before. It was as long and had the looks and lines of a new silver stretch limousine. Except it had glass tubes and exhaust pipes sticking out on both sides of its bottom, and rotary blades on top, and it was settling down in their backyard.

“Then these creatures about the size of Kevin came out of it. They were dressed in dark overcoats that dragged on the ground and were buttoned up to their necks, and on their heads were what looked like baseball caps on backwards. Four of them went into Kevin’s house through the rear entrance and were soon carrying out boxes and lamps and dishes and things to their flying limousine. By the time I woke up Mr. Spinks and found his glasses so he could see straight, the spaceship had floated above our house without the blades spinning or making noise. Then it slipped off into the night, the blades now humming and tubes glittering and pipes flashing fire fast as can be.

“Mr. Spinks wouldn’t believe what I told him I saw — the first time in our thirty-year marriage he’s done that. He did suggest I not listen to Kevin’s tall stories anymore, as they were taking over my dreams and causing me to wake him from a deep sleep.

“But the next night it was Mr. Spinks who was awakened by these crackling and humming sounds. We both hunted for his glasses and saw a much larger spaceship land. And there again were these tiny people, now carting the heavier furniture out of Kevin’s house into the ship. This time Kevin and his mother came outside to wave goodbye to the creatures waving at them from the pilot seat. And then, quietly as before, the spaceship floated up and, like a light, flew off.

“The next day Mr. Spinks and I hinted to Mrs. Wafer what we’d seen the previous night. She laughed and said ‘I can’t understand how two supposedly sane adults can believe in flouter glace flips or flacer glout fligs or whatever you called them landing in my backyard.’ “‘Glouter flace glips,’ I told her. ‘And what about your furniture, Theresa? From what I can make out through your window, all you have left is a table and two chairs and a double sleeping bag.’ “‘I’ve joined a new back-to-earth movement,’ she said, ‘and can’t stand my old stuff. From now on Kevin and I are going to rough it and eat out of coconut shells and live off the floor. As for the strange noises you heard last night, a friend drove by in a dilapidated truck to take away everything I own.’ And then, already red in the face from embarrassment from lying, I’m sure, she excused herself to go in her house. “Two nights later, the smaller flace glip landed and this time Mr. Spinks called the police. By the time they came, these creatures had taken the table and two chairs and the glip was gone. We told the police what we saw and one of them asked what we’d been drinking. ‘Now you hold your tongue, young man,’ Mr. Spinks told him. ‘Mrs. Spinks and I are born teetotalers and wouldn’t think of keeping a can of beer or even an aspirin in the house for fear of what it could do.’ “The policeman apologized, though still looked suspiciously at us. After we told a few other people, we vowed to each other never to mention the flace glips or the Wafers’ plans to anyone. People might think we’d gone to liquor and drugs and we could lose our jobs. “A few days later, Kevin stopped by and said he and his mom and dog were leaving with the flace geeple that night. I asked him how long they were going for and he said ‘Faybe a gort time and faybe a gong time and faybe gorever.’ That it all depended on whether his mother found the climate and chances for selling her artwork there as good as his friend’s parents said they would be. And also whether the people there were as nice as his friend and friend’s parents. “Then he said ‘As you gobably know fly gow, Frs. Grinks, fall our furniture’s been faken gafay fly the glouter flace moving gompany. And goonight a flecial flouter flace gus is coming to flick us gup and flick the flace gamily gup goo.’ As you can see, Mr. Foy, since the first time Kevin mentioned these geeple, he spoke more and more like them. Till the last time he spoke like them so well that I could barely make out a word he said. “Well, I cried for that boy, I can tell you. Leaving maybe for good to a land and a new planet he didn’t know anything about. And leaving this great world, no less. Where at least the geeple are people and not like who knows what those Giffiggog persons are like in their own streets and homes. “And then I also began thinking it was maybe an outer-space plot to take them away. Where Kevin and Theresa had been hypnotized or fed something hypnotizing by his little flace griend or griend’s farents to make them go. I simply didn’t know. “No matter how it came about, we didn’t want to call the police again and this time really be thought of as crackpots. ‘Sure,’ the police would say. ‘Flace geeple, moving gompany fan,’ as they dragged us to the loony bin for life. We also didn’t want to buttin. That’s what it came down to in the end. People should do what they want with their lives, is the Spinks family motto — as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. After all, Mrs. Wafer was still in charge of her son. “So that night we waited at our bedroom window for the last flace glip to arrive. It came late and landed so quietly that we could hardly hear it when its spinning blades practically scratched our noses. And I don’t see why Kevin called it a gus. It looked no different than that big moving gompany fan that took their furniture away.