RESULT: I asked the mother questions. I asked if she knew if the horse had recently been bitten by an animal, but the mother did not know. Has he been bit? she asked her son, who was still holding the horse. Her son shrugged his shoulders. There were marks on the horse. They could have been scratches from bushes or the fence. They could have been marks left from an animal’s teeth days ago. I told the owner we just wait a few days and if the horse dies, then we have the horse tested. Do not get near the horse for the next five days, I told the owner. Sometimes these animals, in the furious stage of rabies, will come after you. The mother shrugged. She looked like her son when she shrugged and I thought how they were two of those people who looked alike not because they share the same facial features, but because they have the same mannerisms. The mother said she had a.38 in the house and she would just shoot the horse if it came to that. I wished she hadn’t said that, because after she did, I knew that the spaceman would remember he was on a mission to find out who had shot my son. I spoke fast. I would not let the spaceman interrupt and ask her about the shooting of my son. Whatever you do, I told the mother, don’t shoot the horse in the head, because it’s the brain that’s sent off to the lab in order to determine if it’s been infected with rabies. If it is, then we know to treat everyone who came into contact with it with a series of rabies shots. Then it happened. He sidled up to the son. I could not hear what he said, because at the same time the mother was asking how much she owed me. She was holding bills that smelled like kerosene. The spaceman was whispering, and then I saw him pull out his wallet and show the son some bills. I almost ran to pull the spaceman away, but the son leaned over and whispered back into the spaceman’s ear. What was he telling the spaceman? The spaceman must have seen me watching. He turned his back to me so I could not see the son at all.
WHAT I SAID TO THE SPACEMAN WHILE DRIVING HOME: I’m sorry I brought you here. I should have had you wait in the truck before I saw the horse. I’ve been vaccinated for rabies. I don’t think I’m at risk. I’m not even sure the horse has rabies, though. It could be other things. It could be moldy hay-they may not have the money to feed it good hay-it could be botulism. Let’s cross our fingers that it’s not rabies, I said, and then I wondered when the spaceman would tell me what the son had whispered in his ear. Did the son say the name of the man who shot Sam? Would I now finally know?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ll be going home tomorrow. I have to get back to Philadelphia. Rabies is the least of my problems. I have something to confess, the spaceman said. I had two reasons for coming here. One you already know, because I wanted to meet you. The other is because… and I don’t know how to say this, the spaceman said. The spaceman put his head in his hands.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Oh, don’t put your head in your hands now, because look, there on the side of the road are two deer and they are looking at us, and see how beautiful they are, I wanted to tell the spaceman, but I could not interrupt his moment where he had his face in his hands. The deer ran off, leaping up the hillside into the darkness.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: There’s a cop behind us.
WHAT I DID: I looked in the rearview and saw the flashing lights. I pulled over. The town cop rolled down his window alongside me. Hello, Ed, I said. How’s your night going?
WHAT ED SAID: Fine, Doc. And how are you? Ever get that inspection?
WHAT I SAID: No, Ed. But I’ve been meaning to do it. I thought maybe I’d even go tomorrow.
WHAT ED SAID: Well, don’t worry about it. Get it done anytime.
WHAT I SAID: Hey, did you see those two deer back there? Looked like a doe and her fawn to me, I said.
WHAT ED SAID: Oh, yes. I did see them. It might have been her fawn at that, but he was big. He might turn out to be a buck.
WHAT I SAID: What were all the fires about last week? Was it just people starting rubbish fires?
WHAT ED SAID: Yes, that was it. It’s too dry now to start a fire, but people are fooled. They think because in places there is still snow on the ground and mud on the roads that it’s wet enough. But it’s not. The dead grass on the fields is like tinder, and the leaves from last fall on the ground are like paper. They go up like that, Ed said, while snapping his fingers in the space above his blinking radio in the patrol car.
WHAT I SAID: Well, let’s hope the fires are over.
WHAT ED SAID: Yes, let’s hope so. Well, I’ll be seeing you then. Take care. And then Ed drove off ahead of me.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: What did that cop stop you for? Were you speeding? Was your taillight out? The town cop stopped you for nothing, but meanwhile he sits in his car and lets the man who shot your son freely wander the town? What kind of town is this? said the spaceman.
WHAT I SAID: Oh, no. That was just Ed, I said. Ed likes to chat sometimes. What is it you were saying before Ed stopped us? The spaceman leaned his head back on the headrest of the seat. He looked up at the ceiling of my truck.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ve got kidney disease.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Was there someone he could see on the ceiling of my truck that he was talking to? Maybe I had left the shade to the sunroof of my truck slid open and he was talking to someone through it. Was his spacecraft up there floating above us, flashing its lights, talking back to the spaceman? Was he telling the spacecraft that he had kidney disease?
WHAT I SAID: I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear that.
WHAT I WANTED TO SCREAM: Alarm! Alarm! in a German accent, and I wanted to lower my truck to the safety of the depths of the sea.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ve been on the donors’ list too long. My father, the other one, he offered to donate one of his, but we’re not a match. I could have told them that at the hospital before all the tests, that we were not a match. It was something I knew from a long time ago. Maybe something I figured out while watching him swim, the way he swam only sidestroke that we were not a match, but he insisted on trying. He is that kind of father. Then the spaceman looked at me. I knew he was looking at me because we were going past the third streetlamp in our town and the streetlamp was on. It hadn’t been turned off to save the town money yet. The spaceman said, while he was looking at me, that he bet that he and I were a match. I bet we are a good match, he said, and then he put his face in his hands again. We now had turned up a road that eventually would take us home. It was one of the reasons I came to see you, to ask you, he said into his hands. The road we were on was dirt, and in the headlights I could see how the mud had turned the road into a washboard of ruts. The truck bounced over the ruts and I could see how the spaceman’s hands were moving up and down his face from the bouncy ride and then the spaceman took his hands off his face and set one on the armrest and one on the console between us. I noticed after I drove over a very deep rut that the CHECK ENGINE light in the truck went off, and I thought, finally, something’s been fixed, and I wondered if I were on some kind of streak and maybe my levels would be the next thing to be magically repaired. I started driving up our driveway, but I didn’t drive all the way up. I didn’t want the spaceman to have to get out of the truck and be close to the house, where the children might come running out to see us. One of them, probably Sarah, would see his face and ask right away why he had been crying. I stayed parked at the start of our driveway with the engine off.