Barry watched this and said, “There are no animals where we come from. They’re extraordinary things. You’re very lucky to have them. That’s what I like most on Earth—the animals.”
“What’s your favorite?”
The gull rose into the air carrying the flattened carcass in its beak. Landing on top of a streetlamp, it looked around like it didn’t know how it got there.
Barry chuckled, his head bent way back to watch the bird. “That’s an interesting question. Off the top of my head I would have to say either the dodo bird or the stegosaurus, although you couldn’t really call that an animal, could you?”
“No, most people would call it a dinosaur. And the dodo is extinct.” I waited for a response but he just kept looking up.
The seagull lifted lazily off its high perch and flew away with the ugly prize still in its beak.
“Yes, both creatures are extinct.”
“But you’ve seen them alive since you’ve been here, right Barry? Or am I wrong?”
My Favorite Martian shook his head. “No, you’re not wrong. The first thing we did when we got here was review mankind’s history. We visited every era of the earth’s past to familiarize ourselves with where humanity came from.”
I said, “Hmm.” Standing in the Grand Union parking lot listening to a man from outer space say he’d paid a quick visit to the Jurassic period to see dinosaurs while on a field trip for his class in Mankind 101. What else could I say but Hmm?
“It must be hard to believe. Would you like some proof, Mr. McCabe?”
“Barry, once again you read my mind.”
“Fair enough. What can I show you? What would you like to see? A stegosaurus?”
“No, it would crack the pavement and then I’d have to arrest both of you for disturbing the peace. But are you serious? Can you call up whatever I want to see?”
“Yes, so long as it exists now or once existed. Nothing beyond that. As I said, we do have limitations here.”
“I know exactly what I want to see.”
“Really, a stegosaurus would be no problem—”
“Skip it, Barry. You want to prove who you are? I’ll tell you what I want to see.”
After I did, his shoulders sagged like they were silently complaining “that’s all?” But he straightened them again and said okay, follow him. He started across the parking lot toward the market.
“And Magda will be all right?”
“Trust me.”
“You keep saying that. Why should I?”
“In five minutes you’ll know why. For five minutes trust that nothing will happen to your wife.” His big open face was one you immediately felt you could trust. It was perfect for the job he’d been sent to do. You saw this guy and right off you thought, I’m in good hands. Maybe I’m in trouble, but here’s a man who looks like he can help me. I’ll trust him.
Too bad he happened to be an alien.
He stopped walking, turned, and looked straight at me.
Paranoia hit like a glass of ice water thrown in my face. “What? What’s the matter?”
“Something...” Touching his chin with three fingers he slid them back and forth as if feeling for stubble. “Something just happened here in town that matters. I don’t know what, but something important. I just felt it. It’s very strong. It’ll affect things.”
“What?”
He raised a hand palm up. “I don’t know what, but something... something very definitely just happened in your town that will affect things.”
“That doesn’t help, Barry. If you traveled from your planet to here and can change time, conjure dinosaurs, bring back the dead, how come you can’t... Where are you from anyway?”
“It would be best to express it mathematically but since that’s not your bent, I’ll say it phonetically: Hratz-Potayo.”
“Rat’s Potato?” My gut jumped in before my head had time to think. A laugh burst out of me that sounded like a bizarre jungle bird: Yee-Yee-Yee—Caw—caw—caw. “You come from Rat’s Potato!” I couldn’t stop laughing. The name sounded so stupid—like a name from a TV show for little kids. Plus I’d reached some kind of breaking point—after all that had gone on it finally felt as if my brain was melting like hot candle wax.
While I laughed, Barry lifted his thumb and began carefully writing with it in the air. As his finger moved, two words in thick white script appeared between us and hung there unmoving: HRATZ-POTAYO.
“Where is that?”
“Seen from the earth, it is behind the Crab Nebula.” “Oh. So you rats are behind the crab. That’s fitting.” I pointed to the lunatic words hanging in the air, as vivid as if they were on fire. “If it were any other time, seeing this would impress the hell out of me, Barry. But you know what I feel now? Tired. That’s all—just fucking tired. Let’s go see if you’re telling the truth.” Now I was the one who started walking toward the market, although I didn’t know if that was where we were supposed to end up.
He hesitated. Reaching toward the white words he plucked them out of the air and put them into his pocket. “It wouldn’t be good for others to see them there like that. Who knows what they would think.”
“Whatever. Are we going to the market?”
“Yes. That’s what I want to show you.”
Long before we got there I knew it was all true. I knew Barry was the real thing. I knew that what I was about to see was impossible but I was about to see it anyway. I could already hear it. And what I heard half the Western world would have killed to hear.
I stopped and looked at the spaceman, but he continued walking. Without looking at me he said, “Come on, you’ll hear better inside.”
At the market door he pushed it in. The moment the door swung open the music swelled louder and I almost swooned. I could not believe it. You know instantly when music is live compared to when it’s on the radio or piped-in shit. The hyped-up rawness of it, the blare and bang of too much guitar, feedback wrecking your ears, or drums that push everything else out. This was live and it was them because now I could see them. And Jesus Christ, it was them.
I had been in the market a thousand times before but it had never looked like this. Where aisles of food should have been, a stage had been erected in the middle of the store. But nothing professional—you must understand that. Nothing glitzy, expensive or in any way appropriate to who was standing on that stage playing live for only Barry and me.
They saw us moving toward them but none reacted with anymore than a shrug or a hi-how-you-doin’ head tip. Their indifference said we weren’t interrupting them because they were used to an audience.
John Lennon sat on the edge of the small stage with a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and a Rickenbacker guitar held in his hands. He looked twenty-five years old, maybe thirty—they all did. Paul stood on the other side of the stage next to George. The two of them were weaving back and forth, goofing around. Paul sang a lousy version of “I Feel Fine.” At the back of the stage Ringo played the drums with eyes closed. “I Feel Fine” performed badly by the Beatles. Bad or not, it was the boys and their sound was un-fucking-mistakable.
That’s what I’d asked Barry to show me and that’s what this was a quarter of a century after the group broke up, twenty years after Lennon was murdered. For a million reasons I wanted to reach out and touch Lennon’s arm—only that—but I resisted the impulse. He must have sensed my excitement and awe though because he abruptly looked up and wiggled his eyebrows at me. It was the same expression he’d used in a famous TV interview he’d done after the group broke up. I had the interview on tape at home. I owned way too much Beatles memorabilia because no one, not no one, was ever better than they were.