Waverley
by
Peter Andrews
I was just a
kid when the aliens came, so I guess you can discount what
I have to say. But I remember it fine, and I’m not making
it up.
Waverley, the town I grew up in, was in the middle of South
Dakota. Tough winters. Plenty of nothing everywhere. I
loved it. A kid there knew everyone and was a part of
everything. I was safe and sure in a way that I’ve never
been since.
It’s difficult nowadays to imagine how cut off we were from
the outside world. In the 1950s, living in a farming
community in the Great Plains was like living on the Moon.
People rarely came by and even mail from the outside was
shared around until it was worn out. Besides that, we kept
to ourselves, except at harvest time. And even then, only a
few people left our town. Waverley had its own newspaper.
It was 1959, and television was new. We had one station
that broadcast from Pierre and gave a fuzzy signal at my
house, but good enough. When Dragnet
or
The
Untouchables was on, I could
make it over to Rusty Havergood’s house as long as it
wasn’t a school night. That was true for me all through
fourth and fifth grade, but in the spring of that year, the
signal suddenly got better, and I could see everything from
home. That was good, because that’s when things really
started to happen.
Everyone in town saw the broadcasts from the big cities.
Weird domes sprouted up just outside of New York,
Washington, Los Angeles. Lots of people offered their
opinion about what they were. Adults talked a lot about
what to do, and they had politicians and scientists on TV.
And I remember that, after a few days with nothing
happening, the adults got scared. The army attacked, and
none of the weapons did anything but create a lot of smoke
and fire outside the domes.
Then, of course, aliens came out and made friends with
everyone. Our moms and dads and the other adults in
town couldn’t help
talking about it in front of us, and we knew they were
still worried, but most of them calmed down in a few days.
Only Mrs. Jenkins, who had three boys and no husband, kept
fretting about “youth at risk,” until it became comical. We
came up with a dozen ways to say it, but always behind her
back.
Things settled down, and we kids figured we’d go see the
aliens someday about the same as we’d go see the ocean or
Rome or helicopters. I think for awhile that’s all aliens
meant to us.
People ask, how could you not know the truth? Are folks out
on the farms really that dumb?
Well, how would we know? When you live in a town like
Waverley, you don’t go anyplace else, except the rodeo in
Pierre. Long-distance phone calls back then were for rich
people. And we trusted what we saw on TV. If sophisticated
New Yorkers could get panicked by War of the
Worlds, I don’t think
believing in aliens was stupid for us. Especially since
there really were aliens.
So when a dome appeared outside our town just before school
ended for the summer, we were surprised, but not alarmed.
We only wondered what they had in mind for us.
It might have been different if they had looked really odd,
but they were less remarkable to us than Chinese or
Negroes. There was something funny about their eyebrows and
they wore sparkly clothing. And they were pretty sexy,
although I was a bit young for that to be very important.
To me, the main thing was that they were exotic. Like
circus people from another planet.
They wanted our manure. This always brings a good chuckle
from folks who don’t know better, but it didn’t seem
strange to us. Manure is valuable on a farm, even though it
isn’t rare. We have plenty of cattle in South Dakota. Why
the aliens wanted manure wasn’t really our business, and I
don’t think anyone asked. It would have been rude.
The aliens wanted truckloads. I don’t know how many tons,
but a lot. Manure absorbed that summer for us kids and the
whole town. We did nothing but collect it and deliver it.
No cow patty was safe! In fact, I’m sure some people
weren’t all that fussy about having what we delivered come
from cows, if you know what I mean.
We didn’t do this work out of the goodness of our hearts.
It was all part of a business deal that seemed pretty
shrewd to us at the time. We would provide the aliens with
manure, and they would provide us with cop cars.
Now, our town had exactly one cop car at the time. That’s
all we really needed and Officer Baxter was the only cop I
knew until I grew up and moved away. These alien cop cars
weren’t for us, they were for selling. The aliens were
supposed to trade with us exclusively, and we would supply
all the big cities. Now, I’m not good with numbers, but
Zero McKenzie said we would get 20,736 cop cars. That’s 12
times 12 times 12 times 12, and I just refigured it, so I’d
get it right for you.
Not a bad deal for some truckloads of crap. Bill Coney, who
was our mayor and had signs with his name on them all over
town, was pretty proud of his business skills. He was our
barber, but he also owned the filling station. About once a
week, he’d get a nickel from me when I bought a bottle of
pop from his machine. Put the coin in, pull the bottle out,
cold and sweet. He knew his customers, and he probably got
a whole dollar out of me that summer, even accounting for
the deposits.
Everyone thought the trade was a good idea, and I haven’t
even told you the best part yet. These cars were all
anti-gravity. They floated right in the air. When the deal
was struck, they put one of them in front of Shannon’s feed
store. It was shaped like a big egg and had two windows
that also were doors. The frame was painted up like a black
and white, and it even said POLICE on it in big bold
letters. There was a bubblegum light on top and a button
you could push to make the siren go off. Two men could sit
inside, but I’m here to tell you we got eleven kids at once
in it.
It was hard to do chores for the first week with that thing
in town. We all kept looking for excuses to slip away from
home and climb into it. Really, it was a nuisance, and the
adults talked about storing it away. Before that happened,
the novelty wore off. If we could have driven it around, it
might have been different, but it was chained into place.
We had it pretty much explored by the Fourth of July.
I don’t know why there aren’t any photographs of it. Moose
Abeles tried to take some, but they didn’t come out. Of
course, he never was very good with a camera.
Now, the smell of manure is really not all that bad. Go
past a herd, and it’s sweet and earthy. But if you’re
shoveling the stuff all day long, it loses its charm. By
the truckload, it’s undeniably nasty.
The Waverley goal was high and seemed unreachable. We had a
big, painted thermometer set up next to the flagpole in the
middle of town, and it seemed like it never got any higher.
There was no baseball that summer. None of us went fishing
or built forts or dressed up like cowboys. We shoveled
manure. That smell got into our clothes so our mothers
couldn’t get it out. It got into our skin so it wouldn’t
wash away. It got into our noses and changed the taste of
every meal. We, the kids, we definitely did our part. Which
is ironic and more than a little sad to me considering how
things worked out.
As the summer got hotter and smellier, we saw, at last,
some progress on that thermometer. The adults started
talking about how big this trade would be. They made plans
to bring some of the vehicles to the rodeo and argued about
how much they’d charge for each. The statement I heard over
and over again was, “This will put Waverley on the map!” It
made no sense to me. I had a National Geographic map of
South Dakota in my room. Waverley was already there, just
west of Deadwood. And you can find it today if you go to a
library and get out one of the old maps.
I was less concerned with maps than with taking a ride in
one of those eggs. I’d never been in a plane or a balloon
or a helicopter. I had climbed the church steeple once and
touched my finger to the top of the lighting rod. That was
the highest I’d ever gotten, and I had hopes of really
flying above the countryside. Maybe with one of those lady
aliens at my side, I’d fly all the way to the ocean. All
the way to Rome.
Of course none of this would happen if we didn’t collect
the manure. In my mind, we had to get it done before school
started again. I guess there was a real deadline, but
that’s what I had in my head. I would stand next to the
thermometer just about every other day and measure its
progress against myself. Since I was sprouting up that
summer, my impressions were never completely accurate, but
I knew when the red in the thermometer got above my head
that we were going to make it.
That day, I went to the feed store and just sat in the
vehicle for an hour, maybe more. I could see myself taking
off. I could see the ground rushing beneath me. I could see
Miss America Alien smiling at my side. I actually fell
asleep there, and my father was mad when he finally found
me. Chores had not been done and my mom was worried. He
whacked me a few times, and I tried not to cry. It was
embarrassing.
All that was forgotten the next morning. Even from my
house, I could hear the diesel engine of one of the manure
trucks starting up. The last truck. I dressed and tried to
get away, but my mom wouldn’t let me, not without
breakfast. And I had to wait for my sister who took forever
deciding what color ribbons should be in her hair. Then she
had to tie them herself since she thought she was grown up
or something.
Zero saved me a place in front of the feed store. Someone
had made a flatbed truck into a stand for Mayor Bill Coney,
the minister and a couple of aliens. Crates, which were
still wooden back then, had been stacked to give them steps
up.
The Mayor made a boring speech, and then smiled and shook
hands with everyone. He kissed a lady alien and everyone
clapped. We wanted the aliens to say something too, and a
big one, who used to stop by the Mayor’s barbershop to
talk, stood up and faced the audience.
He didn’t talk. He sang. A wandering song with notes that
went right through us. The most beautiful music I’ve ever
heard, and this was over forty years ago. I thought he sang
for about seven hours, but it really was just a few
minutes. When he stopped, everyone just stood there,
silent. I realized I had been crying. I had fought not to
cry the day before when I got into trouble, and here I was
with my face all wet. I wiped the tears away, embarrassed
again. But everyone else had been crying, too, so it wasn’t
bad.
Then they came. Not a hundred eggs, understand. Not a
thousand. Over twenty thousand. Like a whole parking lot’s
worth of cars floating into our little town. Think of an
egg for each person at a rodeo, hovering over your head.
I had never seen so many things at once. It was bigger than
our biggest cattle herd. Bigger than all the BBs in every
box in Mr. Shannon’s store. There were two eggs in the air
for each meal I’d eaten since I’d been born. Above our
heads. Casting shadows. Moving in on us.
And I suddenly had a feeling of falling upward because all
this stuff in the air made every building, car and person
on the ground seem insignificant by comparison.
They moved in closer, close enough to touch, and the
bubblegum lights suddenly all turned on at once. We all
laughed. It was a celebration. The Mayor clapped the big
alien on the back. The band played “God Bless America.”
The eggs dropped just a bit lower, and I couldn’t resist. I
climbed in. Of course, all the other kids had to do the
same. I helped my sister in, since she couldn’t reach. The
dream had come true, and we couldn’t be any happier.
After I helped my sister get settled, I arranged myself so
I was comfortable, and that’s when I saw it.
I had dropped a nickel in the road. When I’d climbed into
the egg, it had fallen out of my pocket, and I could see it
there. If someone else claimed it for finderskeepers, I
would not have my bottle of pop. That’s all. So I climbed
back down from the egg and picked up my money. I reached
for the egg, and a breeze blew it just beyond my grasp. I
took a step closer and jumped, but missed when a stronger
breeze pushed all the eggs a bit to the south. I’m sure
people must have been talking at this point, but I was
getting irritated, feeling I was being made the fool. I
remember Zero laughing at me.
I ran toward the egg that held my sister just as the
vehicle got caught in an air current. Her egg, and all the
others, simply blew away, like chaff in the wind. Within
moments, over twenty thousand eggs had been swept away
toward the distant horizon. They simply disappeared into
the Rocky Mountains.
The adults screamed. Mr. O’Donovan jumped into his truck
and tried to follow. My mother grabbed me and held me as
she whispered my sister’s name, over and over again.
And the aliens? I looked back at them. To this day, I
believe that they were as surprised as we were. I don’t
think they intended any harm. Tell that to a South Dakotan.
From nowhere, guns came out and someone pulled a trigger.
Then everyone was shooting at the aliens. That’s the last I
saw. Since I was the only kid left, about a dozen adults
swarmed around to protect me.
I don’t think we killed them. I think they got away. I
wonder if, with some discussion, they would have helped put
things back to rights. But they never had the chance.
Someone decided to call the government, and that
long-distance call was the first to tell us no one else
knew about the aliens. We couldn’t believe they didn’t
know, and they couldn’t believe we weren’t all crazy.
Some government men did come out at last. They snooped
around for few weeks, looked at pictures and interviewed
just about everyone. This was a time of the Cold War with
lots of UFO sighting and “unexplained” happenings. I told
my story over and over again.
Everyone was interested in me. You see, I was the only kid
to escape. But the FBI chalked it up to mass hysteria and
left. They were more interested in communists than aliens.
Babies were left, but school started with just me. Having
school with just one kid? I guess they were trying to keep
things normal. I heard they did the same thing years ago in
towns where the flu epidemic hit hard. Over 600,000
Americans died and no one ever talked about it. It was just
forgotten.
People couldn’t forget entirely with me around. I was a
freak and the only reminder for years. When the Brewster
twins made it back, all the way from Mexico, it was too
late. We were adults ourselves by then. The Brewsters had a
lot to talk about. Mountains and deserts and tending cattle
in Sonora. They wouldn’t have made it without each other,
and they never gave up the idea of finding their way home.
But no one really wanted to hear their stories, except me.
Some people didn’t even believe it was them.
I hated growing up alone. I miss my sister. And I still
have that damned nickel. It’s in my hand right now.
Copyright
2008 by Peter Andrews