Joyriders [Creative Works]
If it weren’t for the old skinny guy vacuuming the room next to ours, I’d be relaxed. Maybe for the first time in twenty years which is entirely my own fault. The buzz of the ice machine filled the welcoming pause of the vacuum and I let out a big, wild sigh taking in the Arizona heat. I itched at my beard due to the hot air and as I stood in the doorway of our room, I was someplace else. I was in an aching, savagely red land. I was in cactus country; the corners of my mouth raised involuntarily.
“What kind of motel doesn’t even have cable?”, Arthur asked, stretching out on the bed.
“The kind of motel that’s in the middle of the desert”, I replied.
“At least there’s air conditioning”. I heard him flicking through brochures that were left on the nightstand.
“Yeah, I forgot how much I missed the heat though”, I reflected and closed my eyes as though I was a robot shutting down, “I could stay out here all day”.
“I’d come inside if I were you, your meant to be at an exhibition in San Francisco. Not stargazing in the Marble Canyon”, he said.
“I’ve put on sunscreen, darling. Besides my wife doesn’t notice those things”
“Yes, but your children might”, Arthur remarked as I looked down at two rather pink forearms.
“Fine, you win” “We should probably head out soon, we’ve got six hours of light”.
There was a pause. “I don’t mean to bring it up, we came here to get away, for a week anyway”, he sighed.
“Hard to feel ‘away’ when we’re being paranoid”
“We took a risk being here together, I’m a little paranoid”, he spoke with a mint rolling around in his mouth. Arthur’s muted blue shirt, which had an astronaut cat printed on it, stuck to his skin and his dark forehead was all shiny. “When we go back, you just need to be ready to keep up the … ‘happily’ married act”, he chuckled.
“Yes, darling. Until then, we shall be watching the stars amidst coyotes and red skies”.
“So romantic Stanley, let’s just see how you handle the hike. Arizona isn’t kind on the feet my dear”.
“I may be 58, but my bodies still 25”.
“I’ll remember that when you’re down in the dust later”. Arthur said, laughing harder and I could see his gold molars and his coffee stained teeth.
We drove from Bitter Springs to the Marble Canyon, windows down and an Arizonan band blended pop with this new psychedelic, otherworldliness on the radio. It only took a couple of hours ride but the late afternoon felt quick and the evening would draw nearer once the glare of the sun became unbearable. It burned our foreheads while we packed our supplies for the hike.
“Enough water?”, Arthur asked, adjusting the straps on his rucksack.
“Check”
“Tent?”
“Yes, darling”, I could feel the uncomfortable weight of it on my back.
“The telescope?”
“Well we couldn’t forget that, it’s not like you reminded me twenty times”, I said and locked the truck.
“The gun?”
“We don’t need to bring that”, I stressed. “You’re worried about what that crazy hippie told us, right when we checked into the motel?”
“Hell yes I am and you should be too. Joyriders ... in the desert. Who knows what they’re up to when we they come out here”. Anytime Arthur was trying to be persuasive, he would have these bright, sad eyes peering into the part of my brain that I kept hidden all my life - and still am.
“He was probably just high; I doubt anyone comes out here anymore. This area of Arizona is ... unforgiving. We don’t need the gun because some assholes like to drive 90 miles an hour on the highway”.
“Maybe you’re right. But he wouldn’t have warned us if that were the case. Just let me have it?”, said Arthur and with this attempt he lifted his glasses past his wrinkled forehead, staring directly into my eyes.
“Fine, it’s in the glovebox”.
The size of the sky was unreal. There were no trees, no hills and no buildings to hide the horizon lines in weird tiny corners. I could turn my head from one end of the world to the next, breathing in the vast pale blue of an Arizona afternoon. The spiky vegetation and dusty ground was painful on my feet yet, surrounded by it all, in the thick air, I felt free from the loudness of San Francisco and the tension of conservative, neat-as-a-pin, suburban ‘bliss’. The hike up to the Marble Canyon changed dramatically. The trail started out steep and the both of us, at our age, must have taken a short break at every tedious manoeuvre. We would go uphill and downhill reminding us of the San Francisco suburbs we lived in. The sweat patches on our shirts reminded us of the constant heat we would not be free of until nightfall or until we were deeply covered from the canyon’s trenches.
Arthur, panting, said “You know, in Arizona, every day there’s reports of alien sightings. It’s crazy, Hollywood brings out the first alien invasion movie sixty or seventy years ago and every week some lady in Utah says she was abducted and probed by grey men”.
“It’s funny, after all the science and evidence they’ve found over the whole of human history -starting from the Egyptian hieroglyphics up to Area 51 – I wonder if I’ll ever see extra-terrestrial life. In our lifetime, anyway”.
“If we do, I hope they’re nice”, he said.
With many complaints and many pauses, the trail halted to a flat area that stretched for miles. This led us to a wide red slab of rock, overlooking the valley and the highway. This is where we threw down our rucksacks and set up camp, strapping the tent to large dead shrubs - hesitantly as to not wake up any rattlesnakes.
“Check out the sunset, I’ve never seen a horizon that so red”, Arthur said as he admired the view of the valley whilst sitting on the edge of the slab.
The sun set in a welter of red behind the canyons. The warmth of the October day was ebbing into a faint but tender chill. The weather didn’t bring warm, quick rains and it was never going to. With every step on the hungry earth, it would crack. The bloody sight of the sunset reflected onto the brick-dust tops of the canyons and its trenches. Our white pickup truck, parked by the highway – three hundred feet below us, looked like a fishing boat in a wild red sea. Millions of curves were formed from the constantly moving shade. In this red sea, the cacti were jagged coral and the bleached rocks – schools of fish.
“It’s beautiful. But I feel like the Arizona desert takes hold of a man’s mind and shakes it”. I searched in Arthur’s rucksack for a bottle opener with two warm beer bottles curled around my fingers.
We drank slowly and I found myself using my hands often whilst describing the transcendence of the valley. The sun sank in front of us. Arthur got a fire going a few yards away from the tent and I’d pat down the embers that scorched the hair on my legs.
“What are you thinking about?”, he asked, legs all red from sitting too close to the flames.
“When I was working backstage at the theatre. You were there with all these modern dancers, first night I saw you. You were stretching. And I accidentally knocked over a dozen guitar cases”
“Purposefully, you mean. I missed my dress rehearsal helping you avoid that very hefty fine”, he chuckled and coughed – inhaling the smoke.
“Yes and I recall you verbally attacked the stage manager, getting your point across”.
“Ah yes, stupidest thing I ever did”, he laughed, shaking his head, “Best thing I ever did”.
After telling tales of our first nights and bickering about what we’ve left behind and listening to the wild howls of the coyotes, I took out the telescope making sure I was far enough away from the fire. Amelie, my daughter is the real astronomer of the family. She’s the one who got me into stargazing in the first place. Plus, Arthur thought it was romantic when I talked about star-studded skies and stellar activities on our late-night escapades. I don’t think I’ll ever be intelligent or creative enough to tell the stories of the constellations, yet I can manage to find planets after a bit of looking around. Amidst the speckled, cloudless sky, nearly the whole milky way was visible with the naked eye.
“Find Jupiter? Maybe we can see the red spot tonight. I could only see the stripes last time”, Arthur yelled, still sitting next to the fire.
Jupiter was the most prominent in the sky, that night. Besides the moon. I set up the telescope and in the direct view was the sulphur swarmed, gas planet. It was the size of a very small garden pea in the lens. Yet, it’s century-old storms, that were the size of the Earth, caused it to seem intimidating. I was allured by Jupiter, it looked like a small sphere of marble.
“Come, take a look darling”, I said. He cautiously pranced over, scared of the rattlesnakes, and pressed his glasses firmly onto the bridge off his nose before he gazed through the lens.
“I can see it. Oh, and four moons?”, he asked, still crouched over.
“I could only see four. Pretty right? I was worried it wouldn’t be clear enough tonight”, I said.
“Yeah, it certainly is. But … ugh … th-there’s something behind it”, Arthur stuttered. He moved around, holding his glasses in place still. “There’s something red behind it”. Then, he stepped back.
I looked through the lens to find Jupiter, still small surrounded by four, white grains of sand. However, past the planet, another unfamiliar shape sat closely behind. Well half of it. It was deep red and a lot smaller than Jupiter but large enough for the telescope to show the colour. It couldn’t have been Saturn. It couldn’t have been. This red crescent, that seemed almost attached to the side of Jupiter, was unlike any red moon. It was far too large in comparison to Jupiter to be a moon. It poked out as though it had been hiding there for billions of years but that night, it decided to say hello.
“It’s so … red”, were the only words I could say as I questioned over and over again in my mind what it could be. What it might be. If it was a reflection of some kind: a problem or fault with the telescope, strange light rays off the red canyons – anything to make sense of Jupiter’s red companion.
“Well, what is it Galileo?”.
“I don’t know. I wish I could take some pictures”.
“You could try, I’m kinda tired. Check the tent for snakes? Please?”
I walked away from the telescope, watching the sky. “Of course, darling”. After much debate about what we saw and a frantic shake of the sleeping bags, we poked the fire out until all that was left were hot pieces of charcoal. We lay down in the tent, listening to the coyote howls once again and drifted off. There was a slight wind which rustled the tent. It was enough to keep me in consciousness in and out, catching a howl or two and a hiss of a snake before holding Arthur closer to me. Then closing my eyes again. It must’ve been around two when the howls grew louder. But in my hazy state, it had felt like I was lying on that creaky motel bed. The electronic hum of the ice machine and the buzzing of the blue neon sign saying ‘Bitter Springs Motel’ were surrounding us.
“Stanley! Stanley. Wake up. Something’s outside”, Arthur exclaimed sitting out of his sleeping bag. Looking at the highlights of his face, I could see electric blue tinting his dark skin. There was a shifting blue light coming from outside that glowed through the tent. “What the hell is that?”, he whispered, and I noticed flickering through the zip gap. Peering through, moving closer to the gap, it was a ship. Spacecraft. Against the black sky, a small ship, an airborne metal thing streaming out blue light waves was doing loops in the middle of the red canyons in Arizona. “S-sh-should we get out? Stanley?”.
“No, definitely not. Let’s stay in here until it leaves”.
“It’s just flying in circles. Why?”.
“I don’t know. You want me to ask?”, I said and we we both looked through the gap, watching this strange spectacle of the surplus of electric blue waves forming in the sky. We stared for a while and listened for a while. When the ship accelerated to perform a loop, it shook the ground. It was like a plane engine yet faster – stranger.
“Joyriders?”, Arthur asked, “Are we high?”.
“I think we’d know. Guess that Hippie wasn’t so crazy”.
“It’s coming this way. Fuck. Fuck. I’m gonna get the gun”, Arthur stressed. He attempted to pull down the zip further, but I grabbed his shaking hands.
“I can’t hear it or see it anymore”. It disappeared but I still whispered.
“Let’s leave before it comes back”.
“Let me take a look outside, stay here”. I crept out of the tent surveying the valley and above it, there were still remnants of blue light. Inspecting further, I treaded on the charcoal by accident, but it was cold. In fact, the air was cold. It was a welcoming sensation. Until it wasn’t. It was cold because of the breeze. And there was breeze because the ship was swaying back and forth by our tent, trying to land. It forced the air to push down and spread out; I shivered. I kept blinking, thinking the ship wasn’t actually landing and in fact we had never gone to the canyons. Instead, I’d be victim to a horrible nightmare, and it was the blue of the motel sign, stinging my eyes. But it landed. It landed quickly with the airlock, exuding pressurised gas as it opened. I thought I’d hide behind the tent. Or run. I just stood there, nearly getting blown back. As the air lock dropped further down it revealed more and more of what was inside or who was inside. Black eyes, with two sets of eyelids, it’s skin was reptile like with humanoid features. The inner lid of its eyes were milky-white and closed from the left and right, while the outer lid is black and closes from top and bottom. It looked similar to Arthur, skinny and bald. Although, Arthur wasn’t green and covered in large armadillo like scales. It was an alien, but it was so familiar. It had the physique of a human; it had the height. He appeared to have five fingers on each hand, albeit the ring and middle fingers were fused. I couldn’t stop staring. It stared too.
“Sorry about the noise”, it said. It’s voice was deep and metallic. A dryness due to how deep it was.
“T-that’s alright”, I murmured.
“Just doing a few laps before I head to Phoenix, I like to practice before the big chase. The air force hot tail me from time to time. One nine-one-one call and that’s it”, it came closer. “They only see a few lights though, I’m Ebo by the way. Thought it would be empty here tonight, is it just you out here?”
“Yes. Just me”. I managed to get my words out. He paused before looking over at the telescope.
“You must’ve seen the homeland tonight”, he pointed to the telescope, “Yeah, that isn’t meant to happen. We’ve stayed behind Jupiter for millenniums, following its orbit. We were just a little off course. No doubt, those pricks at NASA didn’t see anything. They never do”.
“What are you doing out here?”, I asked regretting every word.
“I’m not really supposed to, perhaps that’s why I do it –“.
“Leave!”, yelled Arthur, stood at the entrance of the tent. His hands shook with his fingers over the trigger of the gun.
“Arthur, don’t. He’s alright. Drop the gun”, I said trying to calm him down. “He’s alright”. With a few hesitant looks the gun swung to his wobbly feet.
“Oh, he’s alright. Alright, ugh. So, okay so you want a beer or something?”
[…]
At dawn, we left the tent, took one last look at the valley. All the colours of the sky, the streaks of red, orange, pink and blue blended together.
“It’s like some sort of feathered headdress”, Arthur exclaimed, lying back on the hard slab.
“You’re right”. I smiled.
“Let’s get the hell out the bay area. When we go back, we tell everyone. Everyone”.
Comments
Post a Comment