And I turn now and I suddenly understand a figure of speech I have always found distasteful. All eyes are on me. I could never overcome my impulse to visualize that literally. But now I understand. I feel these eyes as separate, palpable points of pressure. These eyes, most of them wide with fear, are on me, and I am a nervous wreck. In this moment I find the always elusive words of this planet even more difficult to shape in my mouth.
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Desi. I am a friendly guy. There is a Kind of Hush All Over the World Tonight. I Would Like to Teach the World to Sing. I Would Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
“But tonight we only have Presbyterian Punch,” Edna says. All eyes are now on her. I am glad. I have many complex things to explain, but I am hearing my words as if I were hovering in my space vessel high above them and I were hearing them from below, through our machines. Edna is continuing. “For those of you who don’t know, that’s lime sherbert and ginger ale. But Desi can get you some Cokes if any of y’all prefer.”
Edna pauses, probably only for a breath, and I appreciate her efforts to make up for my inarticulateness, but this is my responsibility, and I say, “This is my wife Edna Bradshaw.” She waves to everyone and their eyes return to me. “We are a happy couple. Only Her Hairdresser Knows for Sure.”
Edna laughs. “Oh Desi, you spaceman.” Then she addresses our visitors. “I was a hairdresser when we met. He’s such a kidder.”
“Your Love Has Put Me at the Top of the World,” I say to Edna, and I realize that it is from a true feeling that has just come over me.
But the man named Digger cries, “What do you want from us?”
This is not where my head is at. I realize that Digger’s question is on the minds of all the others, more than the topic of my relationship with Edna Bradshaw, though I think the fact of my marriage should offer some reassurance to them. I focus on the question of Mr. Digger. I say, “I want only to speak with you. I want you to be my guests for a brief time and you can tell me about your life on this planet.”
Now Viola’s voice quavers up, though I cannot see her. “Are you going to hurt us?”
Edna says, “Desi wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s the sweetest, gentlest man — well, as he’d put it, male of a primary species — in the whole universe.”
There is a long moment of silence. Then Hudson calls out, “What if we don’t want any part of this?”
“You do not have to speak with me,” I say.
“What if we want to go back to Earth right now?” he says.
This is a touchy point, since I have brought a diverse group of visitors here all at once. I struggle to find the right words. They must go back as a group, but I do not wish for any of them to feel incarcerated.
Edna once again steps in. She says, “I understand y’all were going to the casinos in Lake Charles to gamble. Well, my Desi happens to be the smartest man I’ve ever known. If you just stay and visit with us for a little while, I bet he can teach you how to win big. Y’all have found your luck in him.”
A murmur ripples through the hall at this. I can feel each of my visitors’ quest for LUCK come upon me, like their eyes, as points of insistent pressure on my body. I do not know if I can do what Edna says, but I feel a surge of belief in the room, a belief that is burrowing now into me in a dozen places. After all the years of my work on this planet, this is a new thing.
“Is that true? Can you teach us?” This is the voice of the man named Trey.
And I answer, “Do not be afraid. Follow me, pardners.”
3
There are certain powers that I have. One is to make these creatures sleep. My vessel is large and has many rooms. Each of my guests is dreaming now in a sweetly shadowed space. I have placed Claudia’s pistol in the Hall of Objects. It is late and I am very weary. But I sit before my console surrounded by darkness. I would sing now for myself, using my voice for its true purpose, but unspoken words from this planet cling to the roof of my mouth, my tongue, the inner surfaces of my cheeks, and they block the way. I hum instead. Another of the powers that I possess is the power to listen. To set a visitor from this planet speaking and to provide the delicate balance of light and shadow and ozone and hum of silence and nibble of sleep so that the visitor will open and find a voice to tell of the welter of things inside, to tell of the things that I intently hope will add up to the essence of the creatures of this place. And though I have no telepathy with my visitors, after they have spoken, I have the power to recall their voices and bring them inside me, to become the speakers. And I do this so that I might listen for the hidden music — a very difficult task, since the instrument of these voices is plucked only on the thin strings of words—but I listen very closely to the voices, straining to hear in them the song of the ethos, so that I may know.
For I must know. To do what I have been given to do, I must know. My hand goes to the console, to play the directive once more. But I have wearied of that. It no longer lifts me up. I wish the cup to pass from me. Let some other spaceman drink of this place. I lift my hands to crack my knuckles. But they prove to be uncrackable, for I have gone all stiff-fingered. I am not just weary at the thought of this thing I must do, I am afraid. On the eve of this planet’s new millennium, on the division of light and dark that they call the thirty-first of December, at the end of the revolution of their planet around their star that they have reckoned to be the two thousandth from the birth of a mysterious and influential figure in their history, on that evening, which fast approaches, I have been charged to find an appropriately public place and to make my vessel visible and then to descend from it in my true self and thus reveal to all the inhabitants of this planet this great and fundamental truth of the cosmos.
The console is dark. I wish to close my eyes. But I am humming my way into a reprise. Ah, reprise: the familiar thread of music taken up once again. Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun. Set ’em up again, Barkeep. These are the Times of Your Life. I am in a nostalgic mood. Already words are piling up in me. But instead of my own imperfect, word-bedraggled voice, it is a voice that exists beyond me that I seek. Perhaps it is the influence of Whiplash Willie Jones, but I am drawn once more back to my early days hovering over this planet, late in the sixth decade of this century. There was a woman who visited from a dark hilltop in the state of Virginia. I spoke with her in the time of deep shadows on our vessel. The two others of my species were sleeping. But I was awake. I was very young. And Minnie was awake. She was very old, by the standards of the primary species of this planet. She had arrived that morning and she had no fear of us, from the first moments. I found her in the corridor. She was standing still, her eyes closed, her head tilted slightly. I asked her what she was doing. She said that she was listening for the engines of our craft.
I think of her and I know she has gone from this life and I draw a quivering breath and my fingers wave before me, slowly, as if they are under water, like an anemone. I pass one of these grieving hands over the console and her voice comes forth and I put her inside me.
I am Minnie Butterworth. Papa would let me go off some days, just to walk and think and dream. He knew I took things hard. He wanted me to marry, but I was trying to feel right inside myself first. Still, why should he have paid me any mind? That wasn’t an era when you’d indulge a girl-child like that. Still isn’t, but it was even worse then. Papa was a good man. Mama was dead, but my older sister, Maidie, took care of most of the daily things. She and her husband, John, lived with us. John was a fisherman with Papa and they worked Kitty Hawk Bay and Albemarle Sound, staying away from the big boats out on the ocean. They were strong men and they had courage, but they weren’t fools. The Atlantic up and down the Outer Banks was a widowmaker. They didn’t want to die.