Only Alien on the Planet (6 page)

“Maybe he's getting used to us or something. Or maybe we're just finally seeing what's always been there.”

“No,” Caulder said, looking back at Smitty's house. “Not what's always been there.” Then he stuffed his hands into his pockets and buried his chin in the collar of his jacket. He blinked again. “Why now?” he asked, looking at me. “It's gotta just be that we're trying too hard. We're seeing what we want to see.”

“You really think that?” I asked him impatiently.

“Ginny,” he said. “I don't know how to think anything else.” He shook his head. “What if—no. I just don't know how to think anything else. Come on. I'm freezing.” He started to walk. I wanted to kick him, but instead, I fell in beside him, hissing. “If something has actually changed,” he went on very carefully, “then we're bound to see more of it. We've just got to stay objective, but stay aware. Okay? Objective, but aware.”

“Fine,” I said, more than a little disappointed in his sense of drama.

He stopped at the bottom of my walk, waiting for me to go up first. Then he followed me, still looking very thoughtful. “If what you say turns out to be true…” he said as he climbed up the porch steps and reached past me for the doorknob, “…the universe has just reeled on its axis.”

Suddenly he grinned at me and pushed the front door open. “Okay, you guys,” he yelled. “We can hear you breathing in there. I hope you've gotten some serious work done.”

Of course they hadn't.

S
eptember was half gone, and our street was going up in flames. It was strange—where I come from, trees are mostly green, and then they turn brown; after that, the leaves come off and it rains a little bit. That's when you have to start wearing long-sleeved T-shirts in the evening. But here, the nights go chill, and then the trees turn themselves inside out, gold and russet and scarlet all mixed with fading green, like something out of
Through the Looking-Glass
.

Charlie loved it, of course. His sense of security is anchored in more abstract things than the colors of leaves. And I have to admit, I thought it was beautiful too—in an unsettling kind of way.

I retreated to the house, but kept bumping into corners and bookcases that stuck out in places where I didn't expect them. The good old couches and piano and dining room furniture were there, but they seemed strangely disjointed in their new, raw rooms. All of the softening things, the pictures and the little homey stuff—all the evidence that real human beings were living and breathing in this space—were still packed away in boxes and crates, stacked against one wall of the den.

Sometimes I would suddenly remember how the afternoon sunlight used to lie on the floor of the hall just outside my old room, and I'd feel a terrible longing for home.

While nights were chilly, the days were warm, sometimes hot. My parents were making headway on the studio, but it was slow going. When Paul called one night, the sound of his voice was like an echo of a dream.

In the morning, I'd look at myself in the mirror and wonder. It was the same face, the same dark eyes and unrepentant hair, but the feelings were not familiar, and the face seemed a little like a mask. I needed some romance, maybe, to take my mind off things and put a little color in the face. The people at school were nice and everything, but nobody'd asked me out yet. It made me a little sad, thinking about the stuff we used to do back home. Maybe these people were thinking Caulder and I were a serious item. Maybe that could explain why nobody was calling.

It was in front of the mirror one morning that I finally decided, Hally or no Hally, I was going to go ahead and have a crush on Pete Zabriski. Actually, it hadn't bothered me at all, what she'd said about him; I've always believed you can get a lot more emotional mileage out of a love-from-afar kind of a relationship than the real flesh-and-blood kind. I mean, if you never get close to anybody, you don't have to be disappointed in them. And real relationships can get so messy, especially when the other person wants to put more into them than you do. Or vice versa.

No, a hopeless heartthrob was perfect for me.

Evidently, Caulder was of my ilk. Every day, I had Hally on one side, asking little leading questions, making wistful observations— hints, all of them—and Caulder on the other not wanting to talk about it. I was getting very impatient with him, and you can believe I didn't exactly hide that fact.

Maybe I should have let well enough alone.

Our Friday-Night-Christianson/Pretiger-Lonely-Hearts-Outings at the Film Society turned out to be very culturally broadening. In those first few weeks, we'd seen
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—
which I'd already seen once with Paul when we used to stay up for the Midnight Movie Classics of the Week—
It Happened One Night,
and
Meet John Doe.
My mom always made a very big deal about these films when we told her about them; my mother's Favorite Movie is just about anything made before 1953. When she heard we were going to see
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter—
which I told her about one morning as she was heading out the door—she clutched her heart and rolled her eyes and generally let me know it was going to be a winner, without managing to communicate anything remotely specific.

So we were kind of looking forward to seeing it. But on that Friday morning, both Charlie and James came down with the flu. Kaitlin and Melissa, of course, were suddenly overcome with fits of Florence Nightingale. Caulder and I should really have been more sympathetic than restless, but that's not the way it worked out.

“Look,” James groaned finally. “All we want to do is lie around here and watch TV, and you know how superior you guys get when the TV's on. So why don't you just make us all happy and go away?”

“We have actually been paid,” Kaitlin informed us, “for taking care of people far more helpless than these two. It's not like we need you two around supervising.” To prove a point, Melissa stuck a thermometer into Charlie's mouth. “Go,” Charlie mouthed around it, “before they kill us.”

So we went.

“So,” Caulder said as we got into the car. “We could take Smitty.”

That was kind of a shocking idea.

“To the
movies?
” Mrs. Tibbs repeated, standing in the doorway, looking more than slightly incredulous.

“Sure,” Caulder said. “We're just going up to the university, and we thought Smitty might like to tag along. It's no big thing. It's just Friday night.” He flashed her the patented Caulder-is-so-mature smile.

“Caulder,” Mrs. Tibbs said quietly, “I think you're forgetting that Smitty has some very serious limitations.”

“I never forget that,” he said.

“I appreciate the interest you've taken in Smitty, honey. But I have to be honest—I'm just not comfortable with the idea of him going with you—not that I don't trust you, Caulder. I just don't think you understand what can happen.”

“We'll take care of him,” Caulder said simply. “He's eighteen, Mrs. Tibbs. He's an honor student.”

Mrs. Tibbs shifted her weight and sighed, looking off over our shoulders into her own thought. “John,” she started to call, leaning back into the hall. But she bit the name off, murmuring to herself.

“I really don't think you have to worry. He goes to high school with us every day,” Caulder said, sounding very reasonable.

She took a deep breath. “Well—”

“We won't be back too late,” Caulder said. “We won't take him out anywhere afterward.”

“How much is it?” she asked, and then we knew she was going to let him go.

“It's just the Film Society,” Caulder told her. “It's just a buck and a half.”

Ten minutes later, Smitty was belted into the backseat of Caulder's father's car, going to the movies just like a normal person. Whether he was pleased about it or not, who could tell? It was strange for us, having him back there, and we were a little self-conscious at first. But we loosened up after a bit; he was so quiet, we nearly forgot he was there.

We had to park down the hill from campus and hike up to the building, and then we had to wait in line with three hundred other people in a narrow hallway for forty-five minutes. The whole time Smitty Tibbs stood beside us, pretending he was alone in the world. If that's what he was doing.

Finally, we paid for Smitty's ticket, herded him along into the auditorium, found three seats together, sat down and broke out our goodies. I leaned over and put a Snickers on the arm of Smitty's
seat, being careful not to touch him, and then the lights went off and the movie started.

I guess I should have made Mom tell me more.

Alan Arkin plays the main character, a deaf-mute man who takes a room with a Southern family during the Depression. The family is down on their luck, the father disabled and money scarce, which is why they had to take in a boarder. It's a movie about poverty and anger and handicaps and love—the spiritual and physical traps human beings can fall into. Not what you'd call light entertainment.

I was uncomfortable at first, wondering if the handicaps of the protagonist were going to upset Smitty. But when he didn't show any signs of distress, I forgot all about him and lost myself in the story. That's what I love about good films and good books— you can climb right into them and be there. I just hate it when I'm doing that, and then somebody butts in and messes with my concentration.

Which some idiot did right in the middle of the climax of the movie. An innocent person had been brutally hurt, and Alan Arkin was the only one who knew. He had to get help, but no one could understand him—he was trapped inside of that body, and the horrible sounds that tore their way out of his throat took you by the heart and ripped you apart. It was not the best time for somebody to decide they needed to climb over me to get to the aisle.

“Where's he going?” Caulder whispered.

“
What?
” I snapped. But I noticed that the seat on the other side of Caulder was empty. So my idiot had been Smitty.

“Who knows?” I hissed back. “To the bathroom. How should I know?”

“Yeah, maybe that's where he went,” Caulder said doubtfully. He craned his neck around, looking back toward the door. Then he shrugged. “He's probably just…” He shrugged again and settled into his seat.

I tried to get back into the movie. But I kept waiting for Smitty to come back, and so did Caulder. Every so often, we'd look at each other and feel uncomfortable.

Then it was over. “I'm exhausted,” Caulder said, and I could only agree. We looked for Smitty as we left the auditorium. There were hundreds of people waiting for the next show, lines looped all up and down the hall. We didn't see Smitty there. Caulder checked out the men's room. No Smitty. We went through the whole building, and then we decided he must be waiting for us at the car. So we went all the way down to the parking lot, only to find out that he wasn't there—so we had to go back to the building.

By this time the halls were empty and the next show was running. Caulder talked the kid at the door into letting him go in to see if maybe Smitty had wandered back in there, looking for us. Which he evidently hadn't.

We checked out every crevice of the building, the entire grounds around the building, half the campus, and then we went down and got the car. We drove home slowly, watching both sides of the street all the way—no Smitty.

“His mother's gonna freak,” Caulder muttered. He turned the car around and drove back to the university another way. Then we
started driving a grid—back and forth, every possible street. It was getting very late. And Caulder was starting to get seriously scared. I was worried too—but Caulder was nearly frantic.

Well, we finally did find Smitty. He was walking down our own street, just passing in front of Caulder's house. Caulder pulled in hard against the curb, jumped out of the car, came around and put a hand out. Smitty stopped. Then Caulder started yelling, not so loud Mrs. Tibbs would have heard it, but loud enough that I could hear, outlining in great detail the extent of our search and generally sounding a whole lot like my father.

“You just don't do that to people,” Caulder said, finally losing some steam.

But Smitty Tibbs hadn't heard a word of it. Caulder stepped out of his way, and Smitty went home.

Then Caulder got back into the car and slid down in the seat, his head back against it, sighing. He looked at me. Neither of us said anything. He started the car, backed, pulled into his driveway, and turned off the ignition, all without a word.

“You want to come over?” I asked him. I was feeling kind of worn out and cross. Maybe a little tired of the game.

“It's late,” he said. “If my sisters are still over there, send them home.” We got out of the car. He stood there on the driveway, looking over toward Smitty's house. A light had just gone on upstairs. “Sometimes,” Caulder said, “I think this is going to drive me crazy. He's probably sitting up there in his room, making faces at himself in the mirror and laughing his head off.”

“Why do you do this?” I asked him. “It's not your job to babysit Smitty Tibbs. Why don't you just let him take care of himself?”

He turned to me and blew a little cloud of steam into the night air. “I suppose you think we should have just gone home and left him?”

“No,” I said. “Of course not.” I stuck my hands into the pockets of my jacket. “It's just—who made you his keeper? I mean, we could have just gone to the movie without him, tonight. It was
your
idea to take him. What did you think was going to happen?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe I just thought he'd like a little chance. Just to live, you know? I'm not his keeper.” He looked back over his shoulder at Smitty's house. “I'm his friend.”

I don't know what went through my mind just then—a thousand things mostly having to do with my concept of friendship, and the fact that, I guess, I never really thought of Smitty as an actual human being. And maybe some jealousy. “I thought, to be friends, you had to really know each other. A relationship,” I said finally. “Like you and me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, it's never going to be like you and me, is it?” He sighed, and mist curled around his face. “I can't explain it to you,” he said to me. “How can you explain why you love somebody?”