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Show 137. "Is your paper supporting?" she asked between dainty bites of the sweet roll. "Or are you trying to . . . what is the word? . . . debunk?" "Well," he smiled, "I'd like to say I'm objective, but that wouldn't be true. I knew someone," it seemed safer to put it that way, "who saw a UFO . . . up close . . . and it really tore him up." "Is that so?" Her eyes searched his own. "He was sick afterwards?" "Yeah." JD felt a familiar prickling on his neck. He blushed, afraid she'd discover the truth if she didn't look away. He dipped into his bowl of soup and wished she'd stop staring at him. "Yeah, he really was sick, as you say, for a long time." "Oh, my!" She finally spoke. "That would make one believe." They finished eating in silence. JD wished he could tell her what had happened to him, but he knew now that believing intellectually was not the same as believing by experience. You have to live with it, he'd learned. You trust yourself and you don't expect too much from other people, even soft-eyed librarians who somehow remind you of home and the special gentleness that mothers and sisters have for the son of the family. Other than the librarian, the only person JD talked with regularly was Mai Myers, who'd call him at the Chelsea or stop by the station when he wasn't out on a run. He liked Mai. Anyone who'd pick up a wild-eyed kid in a snowstorm, then keep track of him afterwards, had to be some kind of saint. Now, on a warm June night, it was hard to imagine he'd almost frozen to death, but JD shuddered thinking how close he'd come. He hadn't found the UFO on Skull Mountain. He hadn't even found the clearing. Later, he wondered what instincts had led him back to the state road and what kind of luck brought Mai over the mountains on a route he usually avoided. JD remembered being slumped against the door in the hot cab of the truck. He was trying to wake up. Or come to, if he'd been unconscious. He heard the hum of the engine, then recognized red light penetrating his thin eyelids. His head began spinning and whirling through the wild patterns of fear. This time, though, they weren't carrying him along, the men with the strange eyes, they already had him-inside. They were holding him inside. Shiny walls were bearing in on him. He screamed. His arms flailed, fighting his way out of the enclosure. |