Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Wes said, “This kind of work, you can’t just show up in a uniform. Folks tend to get nervous, change their plans all of a sudden.”

“What makes you think he’ll treat me any different?” I asked. “I wear a uniform. I carry a gun.”

Wes stared at my dirty khaki outfit. Gas station attendants looked more intimidating. As for my gun, there was no use showing off the .22 target pistol I kept in the glove compartment of my truck. The truck itself was bad enough — Wes stared at that dented hunk of Detroit steel with a smirk simmering on his face.

“It ain’t exactly the Batmobile,” he said. “And you ain’t the caped crusader, neither.”

I tried one more time. “C’mon, Wes — ”

He shook his head. “You know how it works around here, Roy.”

“Damn,” I said, because Wes was right. I did know.

Wes didn’t have to say anything else. Rudy handed me a walkie-talkie. “We’ll be close. You won’t see us, though.”

I tossed the walkie-talkie into my truck and opened the door. “And if I’m right?” I asked. “If the guy is just a saucer nut?”

Wes scratched his chin. “Got a tip for you, Roy.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t think positive. It’s a waste of time.”

The longer I talked to the guy in the solid-panel van, the easier it was for me to believe that Wes was right.

Not that he wasn’t different enough. For starters, he had a weird accent. The kind that made him sound smarter than he probably was. German, or Austrian — like Schwarzenegger in the movies — but with a hint of something else, too.

And on first glance the guy certainly looked the part. That was for sure. Like the hardware he was packing. He had a pair of expensive binoculars slung around his neck, and a video camera mounted on a tripod stood next to his van along with a couple of gizmos that might have been Geiger counters or electric juicers, for all I knew. Plus he had a pasty complexion and a nervous tic at one corner of his mouth, like he spent too much time indoors engaged in compulsive behavior. Covering all the electrical outlets in his house with aluminum foil to protect himself from alien transmissions. That kind of thing.

But after I’d spent a little time with him I began to think that the tic — just like his story and the video camera and all the rest of it — was some kind of elaborate put-on. Kind of like he’d read about UFOlogists in The Fortean Times and tried to duplicate the look.

See, the look isn’t everything. What the guy didn’t have was the curiosity that always piggy-backs the look. I mean, he didn’t ask me hardly any questions, and that’s not the way it works with saucer hounds. One of those nuts finds out you’ve lived in Amigo practically all your life, you can’t get rid of them with a crowbar.

First they want to know if you’ve ever seen a saucer. And if you’ve never seen a saucer, why then they want to know if you’ve ever seen an alien. And if you’ve never seen one of those, why maybe you’ve seen a black helicopter. Or one of those ubiquitous men in black.

And if you say you’ve never seen any of that stuff except for on television, why then they set about converting you. They want to convince you that you’d better open your eyes and start looking around, because you need to know the TRUTH.

Open your eyes, they say, and the desert will reveal its secrets. Sooner or later you’ll spot the caves and tunnels, the ones that lead to a vast underground complex where aliens dwell.

Martians, to be exact. Creatures exiled from their dead planet, a dying race living out their final days beneath ours.

The government knows all about the Martians, of course. Those black helicopters are government helicopters. Those men in black are government agents. They provide the Martians with things they need in exchange for Martian technology.

Think about it, the saucer nuts say. How’d we get from vacuum tubes to transistors so quickly, and then from transistors to microchips? We had to have some help. It’s easier to back-engineer from alien technology than to engineer from scratch. And if the price of a technological bounty is giving the Martians what they need, why then… what exactly is our future worth?

The Martians have appetites, sure. Appetites that humankind wouldn’t find acceptable if the story became common knowledge. The Martians have appetites, and the men from the government feed those appetites with an endless supply of…

Convicts…

Mental patients…

Ordinary people who KNOW THE TRUTH…

Once a saucer nut gets that deep into the whole little green men conspiracy thing, you can’t get a word in edgewise. All you can do is nod your head and say something like, “Guess I’ll have to start watching my backside a little more carefully.”

But that’s not the way it was with the guy from the solid- panel van. With him, the roles were all mixed up. He was the one watching his backside while I rattled on.

I told him the whole loopy story and when I finally finished up, I was the one who didn’t have anything left to say. But I had to say something. So I said, “All I’m trying to tell you is that it’s dangerous to be out here alone.”

His tone was matter-of-fact with just a hint of condescension. “I’m searching for empirical proof,” he said. “I find that’s the best way to treat any investigation, from the fantastic to the mundane. I must have proof before I can believe anything. And until I believe, I can think of no reason to be frightened.”

“All I’m saying is that you need to be careful.”

He nodded. “I have a cellular phone, and there’s a radio in the van.”

I didn’t know quite why he said that. Maybe it was an offhand comment. Or maybe he was giving me a warning. Telling me that all he had to do was finger a couple buttons or twist a dial, and he wouldn’t be alone anymore.

I eyed him hard, watching for his reaction to the questions I was about to ask. “It’s good to have a phone and a radio,” I said. “But how about a gun? Do you have one of those?”

He smiled. “If it’s Martians I’m dealing with, I don’t see what earthly good a gun would do me.”

It was no answer at all, but he laughed as if he’d told me a joke.

He actually laughed.

I can’t imagine what kind of fool he took me for.

“I guess you know what you’re doing,” I said.

He nodded. “I guess I do.”

I got in my truck and started it up.

“Adios,” I said as I flipped a U-turn.

“Adios,” he replied, dismissing me. And then with a wry smile he added: “Vaya con Dios.”

I drove until I was well out of sight. Then I pulled over and called Wes on the walkie-talkie.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “There’s something wrong with the guy. He looks the part, but when you talk to him he doesn’t give off the right vibes.”

Wes’ voice crackled over the radio. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ve hit the jackpot.”

I thumbed the transmitter. “What?”

“We got eight of ’em, Roy. Stupid wetbacks. Rudy spotted ’em heading down the arroyo. They didn’t have nowhere to go, really. So even if the guy in the van is a coyote, it doesn’t matter. He can sit out there in the heat ’til his brain boils up in his skull if he wants to, but we already got what we — ”

In the background, I heard a scream.

“I got to get back to work,” Wes said. “We need you to join up with us. Just follow the arroyo and you’ll find us. I think we could use a hand.”

“That’s a little out of my line, Wes.”