I saw no point in pretending to be Bart Simpson or, for that matter, Bugs Bunny. I’d come there to ask him about the morning he’d found me in a bassinet.
When I held out my driver’s license, his wide-eyed gaze widened further. The suspicion that had iced his every word now melted into astonishment. “Q-Q-Quinn Q-Quicksilver? Not the one and same?”
“The one and same,” I assured him.
“From the bassinet?”
“I outgrew it.”
“They sent you away.”
“I came back.”
“My life was never the same.”
“The same as what?” I asked.
“Never the same—after you.”
“I’ve come to thank you for my life,” I said. “And to ask you about that morning. This is Bridget, who tells me she’s my fiancée, and this is her grandfather, Sparky. Do you want to see their ID?”
“No. That’s all right. They passed the scan. I’ve got to trust the scanner. If I can’t trust the scanner, then what can I trust?”
“So very true,” Bridget said.
“Is that a dog in your SUV?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You must be all right if a dog will associate with you. Dogs can always be trusted.”
He regarded us in silence, scanning our faces without using the scanner this time.
Then he said, “The only people I let in here are my best friend and my girlfriend. Everyone else I know, I either visit them at their homes or on neutral ground. You can understand that.”
We all agreed that we could understand, and I said we would be happy just to sit in the shade of the covered patio and ask a few questions.
His voice now hushed with awe, he said, “But you’re the baby in the bassinet.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I often dream of you as a baby. They’re good dreams. In them I’m famous and honored for finding you on the highway. You’re always three days old no matter how much time passes, and I never grow old as long as I’m with you, and all kinds of animals look after you, including a bear that feeds you honey with a golden spoon.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so uncharacteristically, I said nothing.
Finally, Hakeem said, “Well, I guess if you were going to spin me up in a cocoon or plant an egg in my brain or kill me, you’d have done it already. Come on in. Can I get you coffee or anything?”
I followed Bridget and Sparky up the three metal steps and into the habitat of a man consumed by an obsession.
|?21?|
Taped to the ceiling, walls, cabinet doors, and permanently lowered window shades were photographs torn from fringe magazines and downloaded from the internet, images of classic flying saucers as well as UFOs of other configurations. Some blurry or captured in half light. Others crisp and intriguing. Many of them sure to be hoaxes. Crowding every surface, they were a claustrophobia-inducing collection of extraterrestrial mystery.
The place smelled of clove buds that were piled in small dishes and placed strategically throughout the trailer. The essence was so thick in the air that I could taste it as well as smell it.
In the living room, forward of the galley, I had settled on the sofa with Bridget, while Sparky occupied an armchair. Hakeem sat in a second armchair but repeatedly got up to pace restlessly, now and then patting the grip of the holstered pistol, as though to reassure himself that he was still armed in case one of us attempted to plant an egg in his brain, after all.
“What I’m going to tell you is between us. If you speak a word of it to anyone, I’ll deny I ever said what I said. We didn’t tell any of this to the sheriff when we brought you to him. We didn’t want everyone in the county thinking we were either doing magic mushrooms together or cooking up a story to maybe get a movie deal. Anyway, the sheriff is a good man, but he has no more imagination than a rock. He’d have thought we were liars or lunatics, and he might have sent us to County General for psychiatric evaluation.”
From under his pleated and beetling brow, he glared at us until we solemnly agreed never to quote him.
“I had no interest in UFOs before that day,” said the lineman. “Zero, zip, nada. They were a joke to me. Not anymore. I usually hit the road an hour before dawn, but I set out late that morning. I was heading north out of Peptoe on the federal, as the land took shape in the first light. I’ve got my punch sheet of inspections to make, and I’m always studying the lines, so I don’t speed. I was poking along like usual when I noticed some white thing in the center of the three lanes. When I slowed almost to a stop, I saw a young girl, maybe in her late teens, out there on the flats, running away from the road toward one of those three-wheel all-terrain vehicles with big fat tires, like a tricycle for grown-ups. This young thing slips astride it and speeds away among the sage and mesquite, dust spewing up behind her. I suppose she was your mother.”