The Enigmatologist (27 page)

The
ground glowed in the distance. It started out small, like a beacon, but as they
got closer, they saw it wasn’t a solitary light, but a series of lights on a
grid.

“We’re coming in for a landing, boys,”
Handjive
said.

Out the front window, the other RVs gently glided to the
surface, landing beside hundreds of small boxes lined up side by side. Spaces,
like roads, separated some of the boxes, while others were almost on top of
each other.

As they got closer, the details on the boxes started coming
into focus. Metal, plastic, fiberglass. Colored stripes adorned white
backgrounds. Solid colors, blue, green, or silver, covered others. Entrances
were sheltered by awnings, Christmas lights stapled to them. Some were just
plain.

“It’s a trailer park,” John said, leaning forward, his
hands on the back of the front seat headrests.
 

Handjive
mumbled into his CB, the cadence
of his voice sounding like he was introducing his back-up band. On the sparsely
lit ground, surrounded by RVs, a glowing, blue rectangle appeared.
Handjive
swung the Winnebago over it, and tenderly squeezed
it into the space, landing.

“Home sweet home, man,”
Handjive
said, flipping some switches and turning off the motor.

Handjive
climbed out of the driver’s seat.
He wore a sequined red jumpsuit like
Leadbelly’s
, but
with a Latin-tinged pattern, like one of the sombreros hanging in Rosa’s.

“John,” he said, sticking out his hand, “I’m real pleased
to meet you. I mean that, man. It’s a real honor.”

John shook
Handjive’s
hand. He
glanced over at
Leadbelly
, a little confused,
wondering what he’d told
Handjive
, disturbed that he
had gained a reputation among Elvis impersonators. He didn’t know if it was
because of his lineage, being the current carrier of the Abernathy name, or if
it was because
Leadbelly
had pictures of John outside
a hotel room photographing a client’s diaper clad husband tied to a pole while
accountants wearing maroon robes and rubber unicorn masks flogged the husband
with stale baguettes.

Leadbelly
opened the door. Metal steps
descended. John gathered the journal from the kitchen table and followed them
into the cool desert night.

The only light came from the Christmas lights outside the
mobile homes, and it took John’s eyes a couple of minutes to adjust. The
artificial lights made everything look crisp and shiny. Without them, it would
have been a black and white world, no place for people who glowed on the Vegas
Strip.

The park was also lit from above, by the stars. They
covered the sky. John tilted his head back and spun around, gazing up in
amazement. It was like the sky wasn’t affected by the light pollution from the
trailer park. The cosmos was fully exposed and every night the trailer park
residents could see their place in the expanding universe. Growing up in Denver,
John had never seen the night sky uncontaminated by all the lights employed to
make the dark less terrifying. Even when he went into the mountains, he was
close enough to the city that its glow dulled the brilliance above. Looking up,
John shrank at the size of it, feeling empty and bare, aware of his
insignificance. He spun around, trying to find a landmark, something to ground
him. Like everyone who grew up near the Rockies, he turned to where the
mountains should have been, but they were far away and their silhouettes were
bumps on the horizon.

Handjive
stepped from the RV, starlight
bouncing off his jumpsuit, the cloak billowing behind him as he walked.

“Nice cape,” John said.

“You like it, man?”
Handjive
asked. “Check this out.” He grabbed the ends of the cape, held out his arms,
and dropped to one knee.

“That’s the showstopper right there, man. You’re letting
the crowd know you’ve given them all you got. And, man, the ladies love it.”

“Ladies love a man in a cape,” John said.

Behind him, the sound of rusted metal moving. Four of the
metal spikes that connected the Winnebago to the glowing discs underneath
detached from the sides of the RV. They peeled away and plunged into the
ground, anchoring the Winnebago as it rested on its metal frame. The other mobile
homes were the same way, floating above the surface, but fastened.

Gravel roads outlined the trailers, cutting the trailer
park into the sections of a planned community. On the surface, it was like any
other trailer park. There were open coolers by lawn chairs, broken stoves, hot
water tanks, a tipped-over Weber Grill Master, outdoor TVs with aluminum-foiled
antennas, orange extension cords running through open doors. There was only one
thing that made it different from other trailer parks.

“Everyone looks like Elvis Presley,” John said.

Elvis impersonators stood in dimly lit doorways. Some
nodded or waved to
Leadbelly
and
Handjive
,
but most stood and watched them walk down the street.

“This is
Elvisville
, man,”
Handjive
said. “It’s where all the
Elvi
live. It’s outta sight.”

“All Elvis impersonators are aliens?” John said.
“Figures.”

“At first we were,”
Leadbelly
said. “Then it became a fad, man, and the humans put on the jumpsuit. They
started taking all the good Elvis jobs.”

“Now, man, we just sit here in
Elvisville
,
waiting,”
Handjive
said.

“Waiting for what?” Sheriff Masters asked.

“The end of the world,” John said, tightly gripping the
journal.

They walked into the trailer park’s square. The square was
a small park from another part of the country where summer meant cookouts,
fireworks, and tubing at the lake. John combed the soft grass with his fingers.
He lifted them and smelled summer, green and sunshine, under his fingernails.
The stationary oak trees rested. Their leaves were inverted, sleeping. John
touched the bark. Thick flakes, papery, but solid. In the middle of the park,
in front of the gazebo, was a giant granite statue of Elvis from the early
years, when his gyrations caused teenage riots. At the far end of the park, an
old woman sat on a bench. She looked like she was waiting for an army of
pigeons to flap at her feet and coo, call for her to toss them torn squares of
day-old bread.

Leadbelly
stood by the tree, brushing grass
with the toe of his boot. He flicked his head toward
Handjive
.
Handjive
tapped the sheriff on the arm and said
something to Professor Gentry. The three of them disappeared between the
trailers lining the park, joking about something John couldn’t hear.

“Where are they going?” John asked.

“The woman on the bench, man,”
Leadbelly
said. “You really need to go talk to her.”

John knew who she was by the way
Leadbelly
acted, the reverential space given to her. But he didn’t know her name.

“She’s Jonathon
Deerfoot’s
replacement, isn’t she? the colonist supreme or whatever? Who is she?”

“Just go talk to her, man. That’s all I can say.”

The bench was on the far side of the park, under a large
elm tree. A concrete path led to it, but John avoided it. He cut across the
grass instead. The lights in the trailers turned off, leaving the lampposts in
the park as the only light. When they’d landed, John had heard televisions,
radios, now there was silence. And the sound of his Chucks squeaking on the dew
dripped grass.

As John approached, the woman looked up. She was cocooned
in a thick cardigan. It looked old, homemade. The off-white wool was frayed and
fuzzy. The wooden buttons running down the front were chipped. Her dress flowed
underneath it, ending at her ankles and the sandals on her feet. Deep wrinkles
creased her skin. John could tell that black hair once covered her head, but
now it was mostly gray.

“So,” he said, sitting down next to her, “I’m supposed to
talk to you.”

“I’m glad you made it, John,” she said, patting him on the
knee.

There was something familiar about her, but it was a
distant familiarity, like John had met her years ago and she had meant
something to him at the time. He tried to remember who she was, a forgotten
grade school teacher, a friend of his grandmother’s who baby-sat once, but the
faces and people he recalled didn’t match the woman sitting next to him, and he
couldn’t remember how he knew her, just that she was important.

“I have a lot of questions, you know.”

“I understand you’ve started to unlock your Sagittarian
side.”

“I guess,” John said, adjusting his glasses.

“When we came here,” she said, turning to the park, “this
land was nothing more than rocks and shrubs. Now look at it.”

“You’ve turned it into another trailer park. Good job.”

“People ignore trailer parks. They don’t like to be
reminded of what they could become. And we still have so much work to do.”

“You mean there’s work you need me to do. That’s why I’m
here, right?”

“Ricky
Handjive
wants to put in
a water park. Can you imagine a water park out here?” She gestured to the
trailers. The gesture was something from his memory, from his childhood.

“Why did you tell Rosa to sleep with me?”

“Where would we put the wave pool?”

“You can’t just trick people into sleeping together.”

“Why not?”

“What about love. Can’t you just let people fall in love?”

“Do you love Rosa?”

“I want to. You fucked it up for me, telling her to sleep
with me. Now I’ll never know if it was real.”

“There is so much you don’t understand about us.” She
smiled and shook her head, almost mocking him. The way she looked at him, it stirred
buried memories. It was a look that had been passed down through the
generations, from his father, his grandfather. And beyond.

“I understand plenty, Louisa.”

“But you don’t understand telepathy,” she said, smiling
and shaking her finger at him like a disapproving school teacher. “When you
graduated from college we began conspiring to get you down here.”

“Like
Leadbelly
getting his
picture taken.”

“Last year we had Rosa probe your mind while you slept.
She saw who you really are and fell in love with you. She’s just been waiting
for you to come to town. I know this has been hard for you, but think about how
Rosa must feel. She didn’t know if you’d fall in love with her.”

“She’s amazing! I would have…Doesn’t matter now,” John
said, thinking about how he’d never see her again. He crossed his legs, folded
his arms. His foot twitched involuntarily, keeping pace with the thoughts
shooting through his head, the similarities between his situation and
Archibald’s.

Louisa took the journal from John, flipped through the
pages.

“I still miss him. You probably think twenty years is a
long time to be with someone, but when you’ve outlived them by a hundred
years…” She read a passage, sighing. “I was going to go back and be his
housekeeper, but Archie asked me not to. He said he didn’t want me to see him
as an old man, but watching his mind deteriorate was worse. They were going to
name you Archibald. I thought it would have been a good name for you. Some
names just fall out of fashion. It’s a shame. It’s a good name.”

Louisa found a picture of John. He is in the front yard
with a thick-ended, orange
Wiffle
ball bat. His
father is pitching to him and John has just swung, missing the ball.

“You’re a good boy,” she said. “You turned out well. It
wasn’t fair, you being raised away from us, but you turned out well anyway.”

“A lot of things aren’t fair,” John said, a photo of his
dad sticking out of the book.

“You see those stars up there?” She pointed to a grouping
of bright stars along the southern horizon. “That’s Sagittarius. We’re from a
planet called Chi
Sagittarii
Prime, in the armpit of
the constellation.”