Digger and Trey and Hudson remain standing. I say to them, “Please, gentlemen. I welcome you to my table. I am a friendly guy. My wife is the cook of your dreams. Please sit.”
And they do. And I sit, as well. I am grateful to my wife. I am happy to be at this table with Chicken Wiggle and all the trimmings on the way. I am happy to be with these creatures. These people. These friends. These friends that I love. Yes.
I am looking around at their faces turned to me. And I wish to touch them, take their hands in mine. I wish to put this feeling I am having about them directly into the deepest recesses of their minds. And then I notice, sitting before me, a great glass pitcher of Presbyterian Punch. The liquid is very still in its pale greenness. There is a white froth on the top. I feel the coursing in my veins and I look at these faces as they wait and all their glasses are empty and I reach and take up the pitcher. I pour myself some punch first, just a little. I am afraid of this substance, but to give of myself I must overcome my fear. I must share this moment. I say, “This Presbyterian Punch is precisely the color of a spaceman’s blood. Of my blood. Drink this and know that I love you all.”
I pass the pitcher to Lucky who pours and passes it on and he holds his glass but he hesitates, he does not drink, and the pitcher moves to Claudia and she pours and the Presbyterian Punch flows into her glass and it feels as if it is coming directly from me, from my body, I feel an emptiness growing in me as the pitcher moves on and another glass is filled and another and I am growing weaker and my blood passes into the hands of one guest and another and another and they hold their glasses before them, waiting, though Misty starts to drink but Digger gently stops her with a touch on her arm and he nods to the other guests who are waiting and she waits too, and when Citrus pours from the pitcher she looks at me and she smiles in a knowing way and she says, “I knew you’d do this,” and she passes the pitcher on and it moves and the voice of Edna Bradshaw is near me saying, “I am oh so sorry but I didn’t realize till the last minute that I’m out of tea because of course this meal needs iced tea but it’s all so festive, being New Year’s Eve and the end of the millennium and all — though didn’t we end one last year too? — anyway I thought something sweet to drink with dinner would be nice so I made Presbyterian Punch, which was such a big success when we all first met”—and I am glad Edna Bradshaw is here and Viola Stackhouse, too, for she is still beside my wife to help serve the dinner, and I say to them, though my voice is faint now from my weakness, “Please sit, both of you, drink with us,” and they do sit and at last the pitcher is in the hand of my wife and there is enough left for a few fingers of punch in her glass and I am weak, I am empty, I feel in some literal way that I am in the hands of these twelve I snatched from the night as they chased their luck, these twelve I have chosen, and in the hands of Edna Bradshaw my wife, who I also chose, and she puts down the empty pitcher, and it takes a great effort even to raise this glass, but I do, and I say, “Please. Drink.”
And Citrus says, “Do this in remembrance of Desi.”
Some faces turn to her at this but then they all drink and so do I and I expect the taste of blood, the briny sea-taste of my spaceman’s blood, but I am sweet I am bubbly I am the Pause That Refreshes and I feel myself filling up once more, as those around me drink, and I am restored. We all put our glasses down.
“That was nice,” Edna Bradshaw says, and then she rises. “But if we’re going to eat this dinner in the present millennium, I’ve got a few things to do.” She goes off and as Viola starts to rise, Edna calls out, “It’s okay, Viola honey. I can manage.”
And they sit before me, waiting. In a few hours I must say crucial things to a planet full of strangers. These twelve sit before me now and I know them and they are getting used to me, and yet I have no words. I am in big trouble.
Abruptly, Trey breaks the silence. “I knew this was in the cards all along. I saw a UFO once. It had red and yellow lights on it and it moved real smooth over a tree line and then disappeared. It never left me, the sight of that.”
“I saw one too,” Digger says.
Misty shoots a glance across the table at her husband. “You never said.”
“I am sorry to interrupt,” I say. “But it is very unlikely that either of you saw us. Mr. Trey, where was this exactly?”
“Up in Michigan. About thirty years ago. I never forgot it.”
“And you, Mr. Digger?”
“In a duck blind near the Gulf.”
“That was swamp gas you both saw, the result of decaying vegetation releasing methane, hydrogen sulfide, and phosphine.”
“Oh no,” Trey says. “With all due respect, Mr. Spaceman, it was a certain winter day and I was stone cold sober and I saw what I saw.”
“You bet.” Digger punctuates his solidarity with Trey by slapping the palm of one hand down on the table. “I’ve seen swamp gas, and my UFO was entirely different.”
I feel a bubble of irritation rising in my chest. “With all respect to you as well, Mr. Trey and Mr. Digger, but there is only one true source of UFOs on this planet called Earth. And that is from my home planet.”
Trey makes one of the statements in the form of a question: “You saying there’s nobody out there but you?”
“Of course not,” I say. “But we are the only species to visit your planet.”
“How do you know?” says Digger.
“Wait a minute,” Citrus cries. “You all just aren’t getting it, are you.”
I am still engaged with Digger’s challenge and I find my irritation growing. “Duh?” I say to him. “I am a spaceman. I should know.”
“He’s the one true spaceman,” Citrus cries, “because there’s only one true God.”
“We always knew there was somebody bigger and better watching over us,” says Jared. “One era, it’s a carpenter. A whole other era, it’s a spaceman.”
“Hey,” Citrus says to Jared. “Love grows.”
“Love grows,” Jared replies. I sense a semantic ritual between them.
Misty raises her hand as if she were seeking permission to talk in a schoolroom. But she speaks immediately, “Excuse me. Are we saying this spaceman is Jesus Christ or something?”
“Do you have nuclear weapons onboard this ship?” Arthur asks.
Viola flaps a hand across the table at her husband, “What are you talking crazy for?”
“It’s not crazy,” Arthur says. “I just want to know what our host has in mind for planet Earth.”
“That’s what we all want to know,” Digger says.
“Hush,” says Misty to Digger. “You can’t always act like you’re speaking for everybody.”
Digger gives Misty a puzzled frown and a cock of the head. I sense that he is not accustomed to being criticized by her. Perhaps the circumstances have emboldened Misty.
“No one need be apprehensive about our intentions,” I say. “As I explained when I first brought you onboard, I only wish to talk with you.”
“My companion is a worrier,” Hank says, softly. He is nearby, just beyond Edna and Viola. “We’ve been missing a couple of days, haven’t we?”
“I am sorry for that. I realize there is a mystery surrounding you. We normally are very discreet about taking up our visitors.”
Edna has appeared with a tray of salads, which she sets on a serving stand. Viola jumps up and Claudia begins to rise, too, though Viola waves her back down, saying, “Two’s enough.”
“Why have you suddenly become indiscreet?” I recognize Hudson’s voice. I turn to him as a salad clunks down in front of me and I nod my head to him in respect.
I say, “This is a special circumstance. You will all be back on the planet in a matter of hours. And you will be my first visitors to retain their memory of all this.”