“One more thing. Rupert D. Jones and we agree that Doug will be our regent on earth. You, Doug, must set your mind on this. You are the one,” said the quiet disembodied voice.
One by one the large brightly lit pearls drifted upward,
becoming smaller and smaller until they appeared to be moving stars.
Doug had been told this twice in one day. Once from Roops and now again from these
lights, for that is what they were called.
We stepped back into my kitchen, and Doug shut and locked
the door. We sat at the table, and I made more coffee.
“Wait till we tell Lou about this, “I said. “She will think that we were all dreaming the
same crazy dream.” It almost seemed now that we had been dreaming.
Elvin and I looked across the table at Doug waiting for
some reaction from him.
***********************************************************
We all three broke down in nervous, hysterical laughter. I
wondered how any of this could be possible.
We needed a mental health break, truly.
Elvin got out of his chair and prostrated himself at his
brother’s feet while I laughed myself silly.
Somehow, we were going to have to either accept or reject what had just
happened to us and it was a hard go. And yet..yet..why not? “That which cannot go on will not go on,” I
had heard somewhere, somehow.
We made so much noise that Lou woke. Not seeing me in the other bed, she came
downstairs. I knew this would not be easy.
We had to tell her. I figured it would be easier coming from me.
And much as I thought, she basically said “forget it, you’re
all on drugs or something.” In fact, she was fairly well enraged. “You saw big balls
of light and they talked to you! And
Doug is going to be the boss of the country?
I knew you were nuts, Jen, but not drooling!”
Elvin un-prostrated himself up off the floor and got into
his chair. “Lou, it’s true. I saw it,
and I heard the voice. We are having a
hard time with this too! We have to decide
what it means in real life. It doesn’t
feel like real life at all! Of course
not! But we have to react. It wasn’t a dream.”
Doug said, “why don’t you sit down and have some coffee
with us Lou?”
She stood there looking from person to person, like she was
trying to sniff out a big joke being played on herself and then sat down. She
accepted a mug from me, but didn’t look happy.
She looked like she had had enough.
I wished I had some other life to offer her, besides the one we had
going on.
“I guess the next thing to do is show up Monday night at
the gym and see if anyone else comes. If
you think telling Lou was hard, just wait until everybody else hears it. We may lose most of them,” said Doug. He
rubbed his eyes and sat back. It was
past midnight. Elvin had his head down
on his arms on the tabletop. Lou just
sat there.
Since I was Mother, I guess, I said “why don’t we all go
back to bed and figure it out tomorrow?”
I wondered what Bubby would have made of the whole thing. I wasn’t sure if I could have handled a dog
talking to the Lights. Then I wondered about Roops. I knew he talked with these Lights, but had
he ever seen them? Somehow, I didn’t
think so.
Upstairs again, I checked Lou, and tucked her in
better. She dropped off to sleep like an
infant. I felt like I needed some help
with her and for her. Sitting up on the
side of my bed which faced the window, I shut my eyes and tried to pray a
little. I was looking for direction. Then I conked out also.
The next day was a Sunday before the Monday of the NO
meeting. We did laundry, cooked, and
hung around the house all day. The boys
talked about hiking home to Arlington but decided that there was nothing that
required that much of a hike at the house out there. We were getting used to being in the house
together. It felt almost as nice and natural as when we all ate with Roops and
Bubby, kind of like some sort of a family.
I have been calling this place my house. But it really wasn’t. P-Sec claimed all the land and houses. They allowed us to stay here so we were less
of a problem for them. They knew where
we were, and they didn’t have to take care of us. They felt fully qualified to move us out of
the house if they wanted it for anything, but there were so many empty houses I
was pretty sure they would leave us mostly alone. But I did wonder why they pulled Denise out
of the store like that. Even if they had
forgotten that it happened and apparently she had forgotten also, there had to
be some precipitating factor. I wondered if that factor would pop up again.
Monday dawned dry and with a mostly clear sky. I had gone to see my neighbor with the chickens,
so I had another dozen of her nice pink eggs. We had run out of instant coffee so
it was back to mint tea and brown bread toasted. Food was a constant hassle. We were so limited in our resources. Local stuff from neighbors was really a big
help. Then there was the stuff in that
old store. Some people had a real barter
system going, but Lou and I didn’t really have anything useful to trade with. We
were barely more than kids, after all. Maybe some day we would, or maybe we
would be able to work for someone in town.
In the afternoon we started off toward Milltown again, all
cleaned up and ready for the meeting at the gym. I did wonder if we would see the Lights
guarding our meeting or if they would stay hidden. It was still early so I
thought we should stop and see Mrs. Steele and Bubby. Maybe he would like to come hang around with
us. He had missed the excitement
Saturday night. That might have been a
good thing.
I knocked on Mrs. Steele’s kitchen door, with all the dog
scratches on it, and she opened right up.
Bubby barked and woofled around like a general dog and didn’t say a
word. Mrs. Steele had us come in and sit
at her kitchen table and fed us oatmeal cookies. I had not had a cookie in a long time and neither
had Lou or the boys. She had Kool-Aid
too. Now that had to be very old, but it
was ok. She must have had sugar stored away, and flour and so on.
I said, “we’re going into town and wondered if Bubby would
like to tag along with us?” Bubby sort
of snickered to himself.
“Of course, he can go!
He loves to go out and play, doncha Bubs?” She patted his big head and
gave him a squeeze around his neck. She
obviously loved him. He was loveable, the huge thing. Lou already had her hand looped through his
collar, like he might escape somehow.
I still had most of that deer jerky in my pack, so I knew
he wouldn’t starve while hanging around with us in town. We always had to keep
our eyes open for sources of water for him also.
Out on the road, Doug said “we better go see Roops and tell
him what happened, though he probably knows.
But since we can’t communicate with him, it would be good to see what he
says.”
Trooping down Cherry, like something from the Wizard of Oz,
we saw a large person all in black with knee shorts on pacing down the street
ahead of us. Roops in the very
flesh. We caught him up and he whirled
around with a big grin and said “hey Bubs, you find these kids wandering in the
street again?” Bubby said “nah, they
came and got me at your mom’s house this time.” We all said “hi” and followed him to his green
door and went inside with him.
Lou and Bubby went out to his kitchen looking for a bowl of
water. Doug and Elvin and I settled down
on the ratty chairs and got ready to tell the tale. Turns out Mr. Jones did know what was
happening. But he had never actually seen the Lights. He had only spoken to them on his crazy
equipment here in that room. He wanted
to know how they looked and was puzzled by the rotating. How did we know they were rotating? I said, “there were some sort of patterns in
the light so that motion was visible.”
He was also interested that the voice seemed to be near us, but the orbs
stayed back from us. He figured that the
voice was some kind of projection.
He served us fruit flavored soda water. Now, I really wondered where he got that!
“Well, warrior prince,” said Roops, “now you must convince
your friends in the city to stay the course. We are inventing a world here,
right under P-Sec’s noses!”
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