Only Alien on the Planet (7 page)

“You love him? You don't even
know
him. You don't even know if there's anybody in there to love.”

He laughed. “Do you ever really know anybody?” he asked, and I shivered in the dark. “Go home,” Caulder said. “I'll see you tomorrow. I'll watch you to your door.”

He was still standing there when I climbed my steps and put my hand on the knob. I gave him a little wave. “And I love you too,” he called to me. He was gone before I could answer.

The girls were gone. Only Charlie was still up, all wrapped up in his plaid robe with my mom's slippers on his feet. He was sitting at the piano as I locked the door behind me, softly playing the Adagio from Beethoven's
Sonata Pathetique
.

I took off my coat and hung it in the closet, then I bumped him over and sat beside him on the bench.

“Don't get too close,” he warned, leaning away so he shouldn't breathe on me.

“Mom and Dad home yet?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he said.

I sighed. “This is not cheerful music,” I told him.

“It's loving music,” he said, closing his eyes as he played. “It's gentle.”

As he played, I looked around the sterile living room. “I wonder if this could ever end up seeming like home,” I said softly.

He looked at me and smiled. “As the prophet said—'no man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom…'”

“Oh, that's helpful,” I said, and I got up.

“Be happy, Ginny,” he told me. He dropped his hands into his lap and turned to face me. “This is home. This is where we are. This is the place we store our love. You just have to be content to be in your own skin, that's all. And I think I'm going to throw up. Again.”

He slid off the bench and headed for the bathroom. I listened to make sure he was going to make it, then I took one more look around. I started shutting off lights and checking windows. I'd wanted to ask Charlie a question. I'd wanted to ask him—"Do you think we really know each other? Any of us?”

I left one light on, the little lamp on the piano, so my parents would have something warm to come home to.

S
o, the very next afternoon, here's Caulder, squinting up against the sunlight at Smitty's curtained windows and telling me, “I think it's worth another try.”

It was actually funny to me at that point. “Sure,” I said. “We had such a great time last night.”

“Ginny,” Caulder said, “I'm serious. I've been thinking a lot about that stuff you said the other night, when Smitty walked out on us at his house. I was thinking—he walked out on us again at the university, didn't he? I mean, we don't know why he did it, but he did do it, and I believe there had to have been a reason. Maybe we could figure it out if we gave it another try. It might really turn out to be important.”

So on Friday night, while everybody else went to a Dave Gruisin concert in the city, Caulder and I went to Smitty's for math; on the way out, we mentioned to Mrs. Tibbs that we were going to the movies again, and said we'd love to take Smitty along.

She didn't argue at all. It struck me that Mrs. Tibbs might actually be seeing this as an advantage; when Smitty was with us, she could do whatever it was she did without feeling guilty. So, one minute, Smitty was standing in his front hall; the next, he had his coat on
and was climbing into the back seat of the car. No one had asked his opinion.

We kept a close eye on him this time. Even after we were sitting down, Smitty carefully between us, we were uneasy.

The movie was
East of Eden
—John Steinbeck and James Dean. That—and the fact that my mother thought this was a great classic—was the sum total of what I knew about it—which was enough, I could have guessed it wasn't going to be real funny.

What an understatement.

East of Eden
turned out to be a sort of Dust Bowl Cain and Abel story—set in the rural American Midwest about sixty years ago. The Abel brother was good and virtuous and hardworking, and everybody loved him. The Cain was misunderstood, and therefore resentful, envious, and violent. One perfect—the other not able to please anybody, including himself. You didn't really get to side with anybody because you had to grieve for all. Fun. A real fun experience.

About two-thirds of the way through, there was an accident, and the Abel brother was killed. That was when Smitty decided to leave. We couldn't do anything but follow him, trying to keep up—out of the building, down the hill—Caulder all the time saying, “Wait up. Will you wait up?”

But Smitty was gone. He was disappearing into the shadows at the foot of the parking lot when Caulder finally came to a stop, puffing. I had started slowly across the lot toward the car, watching them from above.

“Smitty,” Caulder yelled.

Smitty didn't stop.

“Fine,” Caulder called. “What am I going to tell your mother?” But he might as well have been calling to the moon.

“Okay,” he finally shouted. “So, you're upset. So, you're mad at us. We get the message,
okay? “

Smitty Tibbs stopped. Stopped dead in his tracks.

He was suspended in the shadows. Still. Completely silent. Then, all at once, he turned and started back up the lot toward the car, as if he'd suddenly remembered where he was going. Caulder glanced back at me, but I could only shrug.

Then Caulder headed for the car himself. I was nearly there, so I stopped and waited for them. I saw Smitty clearly as he toiled on up the slope and passed through the brightness below the streetlights.

I saw him
very
clearly, in fact.

“Come on,” Caulder said, closer to me than I'd expected. He took my arm and steered me over to the car.

I'd seen glittering tracks of silver on Smitty's face in that half-light. I felt like somebody'd knocked the wind out of me.

Smitty was tucked away in the shadows of the backseat by the time Caulder opened my door for me. I climbed in and put the belt on, my heart thudding, and then I sat with my hands in my lap, feeling very chill and almost dizzy.

Caulder threw himself into his seat and jammed his belt into place. “I swear to you, Smitty,” he said, adjusting the rearview mirror. “Your mother would literally kill me if she thought I let you get away with that. Do you know what can happen to people
walking around alone in the dark in this town? You get away with an awful lot, buddy, but you're not going to pull this kind of thing on me.” He jammed the car into gear, pulled out of the lot, and onto the street.

There wasn't a sound from the back seat.

I couldn't say anything. I was still too cold. Caulder gave me a curious look. I couldn't meet his eyes.

Smitty Tibbs had just graduated from Interesting Problem to full, frighteningly real, Human Being.

Caulder pulled up into his own driveway, and I was out of the car before he'd pulled on the parking brake. Smitty took the opening and flew—gone before Caulder could open his own door. I watched him disappear across Caulder's lawn, his shadow flitting behind him, and then I leaned over, put the back of my seat right and looked at Caulder.

Caulder slammed his palms against the wheel.

“So you were right,” I said to him. “You should be happy.”

He looked at me. “No,” he said. “We didn't learn anything.”

“Caulder,” I said softly. “Didn't you see it?”

“See what?” he asked. “I see that The Alien can't sit through an entire movie. I see that some people don't have any sense at all—he doesn't even know the way
home
.”

“He got home okay the other night,” I pointed out gently. “Caulder—”

“Maybe you're right,” he said, not hearing me. “Maybe I've spent a lot of years for nothing.”

“Caulder—” I said again. He shook his head and glared at me. I held up one hand, asking for just a tiny break in his frustration.

“What?” he said finally.

“Caulder,” I said gently, “He was crying.”

Caulder's face didn't change much at all but suddenly he was staring. He'd gone sort of hollow, moving slowly past shock and into disbelief.

“I saw it when he was coming to the car.”

“It was dark,” he said.

I shook my head. “I know what I saw.”

Caulder's eyes had glazed over. “You're sure?” he said, coming out long enough to give me an almost feverishly severe look.

“I saw it,” I said again.

His chest heaved. “I don't believe it,” he whispered, and then faded back into himself.

“You were right all along,” I said. I climbed back into my seat and closed the door. He didn't notice. “Caulder,” I said, shivering, “this is not a game anymore.” But I don't think he heard me, because he started to talk, almost as if he'd forgotten I was there with him.

“Why?” he murmured. “When he's never done something before in his entire life, why does he suddenly do it now? Obviously, it's got to have something to do with the movie. I mean, don't you think that's obvious? This movie, and the first one too, then… something woke him up…something…”

“Caulder—” I said.

“No,” he said, turning to me. “We've got to figure this out. If he can cry, then he can think beyond logic and strategies. Something
broke him open. He's in there—he can react emotionally. There's got to be a logical explanation—”

“Caulder,” I said, staring at him, “this isn't a logic problem. This is a person. He was crying. He was
upset
.”

“These were classics, right? Movie classics,” he went on. “And what makes something a classic?” He made claws out of his hands and pulled at the air in front of his face. “Something that goes right to the core of human existence. It's universal. It's powerful, pure—something that connects directly into the self. Right? So, if this is, like, the most powerful emotional expression we've got as a people—then it stands to reason it got through to him. It makes perfect sense.”

He pulled himself upright in the seat. “Leviaton said something about that one time—what was it?” He put his palms carefully against the wheel. “He said, if it was an analysis he'd assigned— historical context, or precedence or social impact—that kind of thing—an objective analysis, Tibbs could pull it off like a lawyer. But ask him for a personal reaction—any kind of value judgment or opinion, and he can't do it. He comes up with an analysis every time. It's like he has no opinions. No feelings about anything.” He looked through me. “But now we know he does. It's just, he can't stand it. He can't control it. Of course it would scare him, then, so he'd avoid it. Maybe it's that simple. Maybe that's it.”

“Maybe not,” I said, beginning to wish I'd just gone in the house and never said anything.

“I knew it,” Caulder said, slamming his palms into the wheel again. “I knew there was somebody in there. And we're getting
somewhere—at least now we know for sure—he responds to emotion. He
feels
things.”

“You can hurt somebody who's got feelings,” I said, fairly sure I shouldn't have to point that out.

Caulder pursed his lips and ran his finger along a crack in the dashboard. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay. Now we really start pushing him.”

“Caulder,” I breathed. “What are you saying?”

He looked at me. “Whatever we're doing, it's working. We've got to keep it up.”

“But what if we
hurt
him?” I asked very clearly so he couldn't miss the question.

Caulder looked at me. He'd just realized I was there. “Don't you get it?” he asked. “We're getting
in
there. We're waking him up. So maybe it's going to hurt him a little. Well, to save a life, maybe it's worth it. We can't think about ourselves right now, Gin. We've got to think about what's going to be good for him…”

“Good for him? What's 'best for him,' you mean?”

“Yeah,” he said. He'd totally missed my tone.

“How could we possibly know what's best for him?” I said very coldly. But he didn't hear that either.

“Look what we've done without even trying,” he went on. “Now's the time we have to pay attention. We've got to push till we force him out. We've got to stop protecting him, and start treating him like he's a human being—you ask him questions, you expect an answer; you put him in normal circumstances, you interact with
him—eventually, he's going to have to give himself away. Don't you understand what that means, Ginny?”

“It means we're butting into somebody else's life,” I said. “It's none of our business, Caulder. We haven't been invited.”

“Do you know how long I've waited just to talk to him?” Caulder asked, talking to himself again. He got out of the car. I got out too, and we stood there with the car between us. “This is the most important thing I've ever done,” he told me. “I'm going to follow it through.”

He told me good night, and then he went into his house without even watching me home. Like some kind of stranger. Like somebody I didn't know at all.

My own house was dark. Nobody had remembered to leave a light on. Dark and silent, and I was all alone. I turned on the TV for a while, looking for a little comfort, but I couldn't stand that for long. So I shut it off and went to bed.

And lay there in the dark, thinking.

Smitty Tibbs with tears on his face. Smitty Tibbs could cry.

The picture made me heartsick.

What could it be like, shut up inside with everything you feel— never having the relief of expression, never sharing anything or releasing anything or trying it out on somebody else? Never asking questions? Only yourself to talk to. Only yourself to listen. Never to be understood.

Understood.

Not to be loved for what you are. Never to be known.

Tears were running down my face now.

Smitty didn't have anybody he could trust. Not Caulder. Not the Caulder in the car with me tonight. That Caulder wasn't Smitty's guardian angel; that Caulder was a scientist, on the verge of a great discovery—not his friend; more like his excavator. Or the mother who shunted him off to the movies so she could go to some meeting. Or me—a person who could be shocked to find out he was actually a human being.

If he'd been awake all this time—isolated, but hearing and seeing and feeling—what had his life meant? But then, what did anybody's life mean? Getting an education so you could get a job, so you could afford food, so you could get up in the morning and go to your job…feeling the things you feel, behaving the way you behave—what's the point in it all?