Lightspeed: Year One

“I have no idea. I don’t see how it can hurt them.” He looked around the room, then, up at the walls, and raised his eyebrows. “Matisse?”

“They like Matisse. Or I think they do. Don’t ask me, Reverend. I don’t know a damn thing. I do this and I do that, and I find chairs I think they like, and I say they’re dying, but I could be wrong about all of it. They’re not from around here. They’re not dogs or cats; they’re not the same kind of animal we are at all. I try to keep them still and happy, but maybe when they’re still that means they’re in pain. Maybe I’ve been torturing them all this time without meaning to. Maybe they’re invading Earth and I’m the one making it possible, and in another ten years all these dead aliens are going to come back to life and take over the world.”

He listened to me, his face still and serious. “Yes. It’s hard, isn’t it, not knowing if we’re doing the right thing? I don’t think any of us ever know, not really. We do the best we can, and we pray to do more good than harm, but we have to trust God to see it all, and to sort it all out, and to forgive us when we go wrong.”

I looked away from him. “I don’t believe in God. No offense.”

“None taken, Welly.”

“Good. What happened to your ear? I saw you on TV, feeding those bag ladies. That’s how I knew who you were, when I saw your ear.”

“It’s a birth defect. My family didn’t have enough money for plastic surgery.” He shrugged. “I used to keep my hair long to hide it, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s a help in my work, frankly. People bring their scars to church. They bring the wounds they want healed, but they’re ashamed of them, too. If they can see mine, that makes it easier.”

“I’ll just bet,” I said. Nancy Ann had a little scar on the inside of her left thigh, high up. It was a birthmark, too, like Humphreys’ ear. It didn’t take Jebediah very long to see that one, did it?

The second cucumber went sploosh, just then, and Humphreys and I both jumped a little. Humphreys didn’t puke this time; he got back on his knees and made another sign of the cross and muttered some more. When he was done I picked up that gravy bag and put it in the corner with the other one, the one I’d tossed back into the den from the living room, and then Humphreys and I sat back down to wait for the third cucumber to go gravy. Five minutes, now.

“Why do you suppose they come here?” he asked me.

“Damned if I know. Maybe they’re sick and their people send them away so they won’t infect everybody else. Maybe they’re dead already when they get here, and Earth’s their eternal reward. Now that’s scary, isn’t it? Maybe when we die we’re all going to land on some alien’s doorstep, and we just have to hope they’ll have comfortable chairs for us and find out what kind of art we like.” My heaven will have Lay-Z-Boy recliners and Penthouse Pets, but I wasn’t going to tell Humphreys that.

He smiled. “In my father’s house are many mansions.”

“What?” But the last cucumber went sploosh, so I never did find out what Humphreys had been talking about. He did his little praying routine again, and I piled the third cucumber in the corner with the other two.

He looked at the gravy bags, and then at me. “How do you—what do you do with them? Afterwards?”

“I bury them. I’ve got these things all over my property.”

He nodded. “Do you need help?”

“If you’re as good with a shovel as you are with a pail, I could use the help, Reverend. Thank you.”

So we piled the gravy bags into my pickup, and I threw a tarp over them and loaded up a couple of shovels, and then I drove out to the next gravesite. I’ve been keeping track of where the cucumbers are, so I can pick a fresh place each time. I brought the gun with me, but that was in case we ran into snakes or something: I wasn’t worried about Humphreys anymore, not that way.

He was good with a shovel, strong and fast. He hadn’t always been a preacher, you could tell. He’d done manual labor someplace. Watching him dig, I started to get curious. When we stopped to take a break, I said, “So when were you in front of guns before?”

“In Africa.” He wiped the sweat off his face. “In Zaire, back during the eighties. A group of us were rebuilding a church. Mobutu’s thugs had burned it down because the clergy were speaking out against the government. And the soldiers came when we were rebuilding, and they lined us up against a wall and threatened to shoot us all. I still don’t know why they didn’t. They killed plenty of other people, before and after that.” His eyes got far away, then, and he said, “All the people I worked with there—they’re all dead now.”

“That’s not right,” I said.

“No.” He started digging again, and I let him. I know how working with your hands can help, when you’re upset about something. I re-roofed the house all by myself, after Nancy Ann left.