Interview With Ralph

            

            “Hey, thanks for fitting me in, Ralph. It’s a privilege!” I said.
            “No, Tsatta, I’m happy to meet you,” he said, with a little smile. He seemed to be sitting on a log. Not his own great log, but a different one in some neutral location.
            “Why did you call me that? Do I have a name in Saslingua?” I was confused.
            “You do now! I just named you. In our language, which by the way, we don’t call Saslingua, Tsatta means Small Sister. It doesn’t mean younger like Little Sister does in English,” he said. “We are always impressed by how very small and delicate you people are!”                                                                   
            His legs were crossed and his hands were laced together over the upper knee. He looked rather professorial at the moment. He smiled encouragingly.
            “I’m sure you heard that story this morning. The one told by Chris about Johnny being rescued by someone like you in Colorado on a mountain in a snow storm,” I said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if that was you. I know you get around. But I’d guess that it was actually someone like you.
            “No, that wasn’t me, but I know him by two or three removes. Friend of a friend deal, you know?”
            “Your friend of a friend was extremely merciful to that young man. He would surely have died if he hadn’t been carried to his Jeep by your friend’s friend,” I said.
            “Well, yes, he is a father you know? When he saw that the young fellow wasn’t going to make it, he stepped in, as surely any father would,” said Ralph. “And since Johnny, at 200lbs was an easy load, he just carried him to safety. You people die so easily!” he said. “It’s a wonder to us that there are so many of you!”
            “I could turn that around on you, Ralph. It’s a wonder to us, those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, that you people live so long and are so strong. It seems almost extra-natural!” I said.
            He grinned enigmatically. Those big old brown eyes, so profoundly deep, twinkled.
            “OK, some of us were saying that we thought you had rescued at least a couple of human people from sure death yourself. I wondered if you might talk about those rescues a little. If you don’t mind, that is,” I said.
            “Let me think,” he said. “I remember one guy. You know I don’t want to make myself sound like a hero. I used the tools I had. That’s all it really is.”
            “That makes sense to me. What happened to him?” I said.
            “It went like this,” he said. “You can read the whole story if you want to, but at the bottom of it a young guy named Bruce was wandering by those two big boulders on the riverbank when he fell into the Mouth of the Mountain. I happened to  hear him down there. I was able to sing her power off of him and lead him out. He was pretty darn happy to be out of that gullet I tell you!
            “It was a rescue, but not like a regular rescue, huh?” said Ralph. “Not like carrying a guy out of a snow storm,” he said.
            “Hey, I rescued Maeve once! I found her in an old fire tower. She had been zooming around after bats, crashed into the tower and broke a leg and a wing! At her age!
            “Well, I brought her home, but Ramona and Thaga did the work of patching and nursing my birdie. Sometimes a so-called rescue is just part of living life.”
            “I bet Maeve felt that she had been rescued!” I said. “I also suspect that you are sitting on stories I don’t even know yet! Spill it, Ralph!” I laughed a little, expectantly.
            “You want the biggie? The story untold?” he asked, eyebrows up.
            “Yes, please!” I said.
            “Alright, my Tsatta!” he said. “I will tell you. Probably you should keep it under your hat.”
            I don’t wear hats.
            “One night after dark,” he began, “During a walloping thunder and lightning storm I happened to notice a light where no light should be way up on the mountain side. Naturally I was curious. What could it be?
            “I told Ramona I was going to go up there and find out what was going on. It was a tough hike, even for me. There was rain pouring down. It didn’t improve traction any. There was a lot of lightning, and the higher I went the louder the storm got.
            “But I could see the source of the light just a bit higher. I kept climbing. You’ll never guess what I found! But up there, wedged between two big rocks in a kind of crack there was a machine. It was totally stuck. It was what you guys call a saucer. And it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
            “I could see that the source of the light was a handful of blinding white orbs buzzing around this object like they wanted to help, but there was no way!
            “When I arrived on scene I called out to the people in the craft, stuck there in that crazy position, to see if they were alive. I got an answer too! Oh, you know, not verbally. Unspoken language. They, two of them, said they were alive, but their ship, thrown off course by the lightning affecting their propulsion system, don’t ask me how, I don’t know, had embedded itself in between the rocks and they didn’t know how to move it.
            “I told them that it looked pretty good, just scratched a bit and that I thought I might be able to move one of the rocks holding it there. They said that they would be really happy if I tried that. So, up there on the mountain with the storm crashing all around I put my hands on the nearest rock, hoping that it was not fastened down to the bones of the earth. I called upon the Maker of all for strength, and I pushed. At first it didn’t move, but slowly slowly it began to tip. I kept pushing. Suddenly it fell crashing and rolling down the slope of the mountain.
            “The saucer instantly righted itself. The orbs spun off into the sky, and the ship waited, poised there in the air. I could see the details in the flashes of lightning. It was quite a machine, almost like a living thing. It looked grown as it was,” Ralph said.
            “Did you get a look at the occupants?” I said.
            “Nope. They stayed in there; I sure didn’t go in!” he said. “That’s about all there was to that rescue. I pushed a rock off the side of the mountain, to free their ship.”
            “Did they say anything to you after you freed them?” I wanted to know.
            “They were pretty happy. There was a lot of thanking the Power that made the Universe, and praise for my kindness, etc., etc. Then the little saucer shaped ship developed a kind of blueish haze all around and zipped off to the north. Then I walked back down the way I had come to tell Ramona all about it.
            “So, how’d you like that story?” he said, grinning again.
            “It’s a doozy, Ralph! Thank you!” I said.
            “Sure thing, Tsatta!” he said, laughing.
            In a moment, I was back in my office chair, looking at my screen, with my fingers tapping away on the keyboard. 

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