Brad Watson - Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

“Help me,” I heard her whisper. Her head hung down, her mussed hair all around it, nearly touching the dew-laced grass. I pushed and heaved at her, she grunted and pulled, until finally she came free and sat back onto the floor. She shook her head and wiped her eyes.

“Oh, my God,” she said in a soft voice. She looked up, saw me, seemed confused for a moment, and then she slowly raised the revolver again and pointed it at my head there in the open window.

I ducked just as it went off, over my head and into the little stand of trees behind the house. I scrambled to the car and peeled out. Twice more I heard the gun’s Caroom! slam and echo into the night, and soon after the distant wail of sirens.

When I cruised past the house the following afternoon her car was gone and the front door stood wide open. Inside, dressers were torn apart, the closets in disarray. A trail of parachute-like smocks led to the bedroom and I walked on them back and forth. They were printed and embroidered with little-girl things, teddy bears and Raggedy Anns and bluebirds, plantation waifs in sunbonnets, all feminine and soft.

I moved back in.

MISS DUKE FILED CHARGES and I spent a few hours at the police station with a lawyer, working things out. She had no permit for the pistol she’d shot at me, and I certainly didn’t want to press charges of attempted murder, so her lawyer persuaded her to drop the charges of breaking and entering and assault. The pellet I’d shot at her had sunk a couple of inches into one of her arms. I paid for her outpatient surgery to have it removed.

A few weeks after it was all over, I made the mistake of spilling my heart to a lady down the street, a nosy old widow named Mrs. Nash. She’d been bringing me jars of fresh homemade soup and chili ever since I’d come home, and she seemed very nice and concerned, so one day I broke down and told her everything. The worst was that I’d confessed I was about to die of being lonely, that I wished I just had a good friend, and so on. After that, people on the street just looked away when I drove by, and their awful children got a kick out of calling me on the phone. It would ring in the middle of the night and when I answered some kid would be on the other end.

“Hello, is this Mr. Lonely?”

“Who?”

“Is this Mr. Lone-lee?”

“No, this is not Mr. Lone-lee.”

“You must be lonely,” said the boy’s voice.

“You kids cut it out,” I said.

“Oh, please don’t be lonely.”

Mrs. Nash told them everything. The phone rang one night about twelve-thirty and I answered it without speaking.

“Hey, mister, there’s a naked fat woman in your front yard and she has a gun.”

I was furious.

“I’ll kill you,” I shouted into the phone.

Even so, I crept to the window and peeked through the drapes. The shrubs and trees stood silvery black in the evening, very still. Something small and quick darted over the lawn, and I wanted to run out there, run it down, and rip it to pieces.

I went to the library and saw a group of Harley choppers outside the door, but didn’t think anything of it. Inside, I was thumbing through a book when, glancing up, I saw the face of my wife peering at me from the other side of the shelf. She walked around and stood there staring at me. She wore a full set of tight black motorcycle leathers. Her hair was jet-black and cut in a pageboy. A big gold nose ring, the kind they actually used to put onto bulls, hung down over her upper lip. A pair of heavy, strapped, chrome-buckled boots came up to her knees.

“Hey, Conroy,” she said. “You don’t look so good.” Then she smiled and leaned on the bookshelves. “How’s the old homeplace?”

“I don’t know you,” I said. I put the book back in the same place I’d taken it from and walked out.

On my way home Majestic 12 came out of nowhere and roared past me on their Harleys. I saw a slim black leather-clad arm flip a wave at me from a quivering pattern of red taillights that disappeared into the night like a spaceship.

THINGS HAPPEN.

Last night Sylvia and I were going at it, in the bedroom for once. But she lost her head, forgot where she was. Her eyes were closed, and she was humming to herself, and I could see her eyes darting back and forth behind her pale bruised lids. I was a little mesmerized. But then something emptied my mind and left everything quiet.

I lifted my head and looked at her, but she didn’t notice. She was murmuring, “Pedro,” in a kind of whispering moan. “Pedro, baby, oh, man. Pedro .”

I couldn’t go on.

She went still and opened her eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“Who’s Pedro?” I said.

I could tell she felt awful about it.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Conroy. I didn’t mean it. I just spaced out.”

I felt like an idiot for caring.

“Oh, fuck, Conroy,” Sylvia said. “I mean, that’s not even his real name, man.”

“What?”

“I mean”—she kind of wiggled her hands—“it’s just a pet name.”

“What’s his real name, then?”

She sat there a moment looking at the opposite wall, then shrugged.

“Wayne. I haven’t seen him in, like, weeks, I guess.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.”

I rolled over and looked at the darkened bedroom ceiling for a while.

“I’m really sorry, Conroy,” she said then. “Don’t be upset.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m sorry about Wayne.”

It took me hours to go to sleep. Bad dreams kept me restless. They were all dreams in which I said the wrong things, did the wrong things, dreams in which I forgot the names of people I’d known for a long time.

Early this morning I got up and came out here with my lawn chair and my flask. An hour or so later I heard her voice behind me.

“Well, goodbye, then,” she said. “I’m going.”

I raised a free hand, waved it. I heard her retreating footsteps in the grass.

I went back into the house, just to look around, really. I walked around the den for a minute, then into the kitchen, where I washed a dish. Then to the bedroom, where I found my bed neatly made up, the pillows fluffed. It was the first time I’d seen my bed made up since I didn’t know when. Since I’d shown the house to Miss Duke, I suppose. I went into the bathroom, pressed my bare feet on the cool tiles, looked around. I noticed that Sylvia had stolen all my shampoo and soap. I looked into the closet. Half my towels and wash rags were gone. I thought for a moment, then went back into the bedroom and looked at the neatly made-up bed. Sure enough, my wife’s old quilt was gone. I went through the kitchen and the living room. Something was missing from one of these rooms, I knew. But I still haven’t figured out what.

I went back out to my lawn chair and I’ve been sitting here all day, listening. When I close my eyes the world seems full of sound. Traffic on the highway half a mile away. Children shouting on a playground at the neighborhood school. Dogs barking to other dogs, those dogs barking back. Telephone ringing in a house somewhere. The knockity-knock-knock of a roofing crew. Birds scratching in the shrubbery for grubs.

A breeze drifts through the live oak leaves, cooling the sweat on my burning skin, dropping me into the kind of sleep that’s deep as death, or the underworld, a whole other life you never knew you were living. It was nice, for a while. Only the sound of the blood rustling quietly like the ocean in my veins.

ONCE THERE WERE A MAN, A WOMAN, AND THEIR DOG. Neither the woman nor the dog had ever conceived, so there were no babies or pups. The man and woman drank heavily and often had terrible arguments late in the evening, and raged back and forth at one another for an hour or more, their fights often spilling out of the house and into the yard. If they had guests, which was rare, they tried not to argue but usually failed, and then they would argue in loud hissing stage whispers that inevitably became loud hushed gargling voices like people being strangled. They were sure that the guests heard almost every terrible word they said to one another: the threats to leave, the vows of retribution and declarations of hatred, the sock-footed stompings in and out of the room, and the openings and furiously careful closings of the front door as one or the other went outside to smoke or pace around in frustration and rage.