

                           The Witness


"You mean... you actually saw one? First hand?"

The old man shrugged like it was no big deal, then bent over and
balanced the pool queue between two hairy knuckles. Two seconds
later there was one less ball on the table. I took another sip of
my beer, wondering if I needed to get my hearing checked.

"You're joking, right?"

"No. No joke."

He had a tired dullness about his eyes, like he actually didn't
give a fart what I thought. I decided then and there that he was
either perfectly crazy or one of the greatest liars I had ever
met. Perhaps both.

"C'mon, what happened? I mean... how did you..."

"See an alien?" He glanced toward me to take stock of my
expression, then lined-up his next shot with the calm ease of a
man who knows he's got plenty of time. "Not much to tell, really.
Besides... it was awhile back."

"When?"

He took his shot, sunk it with ease. The game was ending up
pretty lopsided.

"Summer before last. Oh... about thirty miles north." He nodded
toward one of the walls, like he knew which way north was without
even having to think about it. "All I can say is that it was,
without a doubt, the weirdest day of my life." He circled the
table toward his next shot, glancing up at me as he lined-up for
the kill. "Eight ball, corner pocket."

I nodded, and five seconds later the game was done.

"You want to play again?" He looked up.

"How about we sit down and you tell me this story."

He made a weary expression. "What's the point? You're not gonna
believe me anyway."

I laughed, "Sure I will. I'll buy you a beer, okay? What'd you
say your name was?"

"Hank," he shrugged, finding his way to the closest table. When I
finally brought him a bottle and he'd had a chance to down a
sizable gulp, he wiped his whiskers with the back of his sleeve
and stared at me, as though the story he had in mind was one he
had a hard time telling.

"You sure you want to hear this?"

"Absolutely."

"I don't want you to call me a liar."

"I'm not going to call you a liar."

"I don't care if you think it. I just don't like being called it.
You understand?"

I nodded. He sighed.

"What happened... it was like something out of one of those old
H.G. Wells novels. It was so unbelievable, so weird, that
nobody... and I mean nobody... has ever believed me." He took
another gulp, setting the bottle down a moment later. "You know
at night... sometimes you can hear a chopper around here... going
up and down the canyon? The night before it happened... actually,
I guess it was the morning... there must have been a dozen of
those things right in the area around my trailer. I mean, they
were buzzing around like crazy, big searchlights blazing down,
and if that ain't weird enough, this is in the middle of a
thunderstorm, okay? I thought there was some fugitive running
around outside. You know?"

I nodded, not really knowing what to say.

"It must have been around four in the morning. My dog, Harley...
he was going nuts. He'd must've figured we were under attack or
something, cause he kept running outside and barking up at the
sky and then running 'round and 'round. I went out to drag him
back inside, but I figure he got spooked or something, 'cause he
went hightailing it into the stream bed which runs by my place.
It goes right down into the canyon and branches off all over the
place, and when it rains, which ain't too often, it's a mess. A
big muddy mess. Harley would go down there all the time, but he
was so spooked, I didn't like the idea of him racing off with
some weirdo out there. I know it was dumb for me to do. I
probably should've just stayed home, but the rain was pretty much
dying down, so I grabbed my shotgun and went out to have a look."

"Yeah?"

Hank took another long sip from the bottle, wiping his lips
again. "So there I was, out in the middle of the canyon soaking
wet, screaming for my dog, right? And I hear the son-of-a-bitch
barking, and it sounds like he's... oh... I dunno... maybe a
quarter mile or so. By this time, the sun is starting to come up
a little. Not to where you can see it, but where there's just
some blue off in the east. So I hike through the brush up this
hill, just basically making a beeline for the noise, when I see
this long piece of metal on the ground."

He made a motion with his hands to indicate the size.

"It was about three feet, I suppose, but only about an two inches
thin. You know? And I look around, and there's a whole bunch of
these things, and when I finally get to the top of the hill, I
can see this big metal... I mean... what else can I call it? It
was a flying saucer, all smashed up against the rocks down toward
the other side. I shit you not. I mean, at first, yeah... I
wasn't sure what it was, really. But when I saw the two
little..."

"Aliens?"

"Exactly. There were two of 'em. They were huddled against the
saucer, or really what was left of it, and I as I got closer, I
could see that Harley was just ready to go to town on these guys.
I mean, he was one very upset dog. He didn't know what these
things were, but he sure as hell didn't like 'em. Y'know?"

"So what happened?"

"Well, one of 'em was hurt. I could see that by the way he was
bending over holding his side, and I figured I might have gotten
there too late. So I called Harley over. I had to hike halfway
down the hill before he'd listen to me. The two aliens... they
were watching me, just staring at me."

"What did they look like?"

"Grey skin... eyes like a cat's but darker. At the time, though,
it was hard to see much of anything. It was still real dark. I
could tell they were kinda small. For a minute I thought they
might be Japanese or something. I didn't like that very much. I
mean, we just got done kicking their ass in the Pacific. What the
hell were they doing in New Mexico? But I had my shotgun,
remember, and as I got a little closer, I could see their faces,
even though the light was dim, and I could tell these guys were
definitely not human."

He took another sip from his bottle, then set it back on the
table. For a moment, I thought the story was over. It was sort of
a let down, to be honest. My girlfriend works for the Times in
Santa Fe, and it sounded to me like a story she might be willing
to cover, but without any sort of evidence save for this man's
word and no other witnesses...

"Did you get any other witnesses?"

He made a gloomy face, shaking his head. "What I did, in
retrospect, was about the dumbest thing I could have done."

"Which was?"

"I took Harley back to the trailer and locked him in. Believe me,
it was a struggle every step of the way, but I couldn't very well
try talking to these guys with him barking like crazy. Then I
went to the market and called the police on a pay phone. Told
them what I found. By the time I returned to the saucer, the sun
was up, and there were some people there... mainly young
people... about ten or so."

"Then there are other witnesses. Did you get their names?"

"Names?" He shook his head like it was a stupid question.
"Listen, we weren't exactly exchanging pleasantries, you
understand? I know I should have, but with everything happening
so fast..."

"What were they doing?"

He shook his head, this time glumly. "By the time I made it back,
that one feller who'd been hurt was dead. The other one was just
sitting there in a state of shock while these kids were trying to
talk to him."

"I don't suppose it spoke English," I winced.

"They were even trying Spanish, but nothing was working. I got
there just a few minutes before some MPs showed up. They took the
alien into protective custody... their term, not mine... and then
they stuck us all in a couple jeeps and drove us up to Holloman.
We got yakked at for a couple hours, basically a stern warning
not to say nothin' to nobody or else."

"Or else what?"

"Or else nothing. How the heck should I know? Look, they were all
acting like a bunch of headless hens. They didn't have any idea
what they were gonna do, but they sure as hell didn't want a
thousand reporters descending from every city in the nation. They
basically told us all to just pretend it never happened."

"Pretend it never happened?"

"For the sake of national security," he shrugged. "They kept
saying that over and over again. Let our elected leaders figure
out what to do. Until then, this is classified. Yada yada yada.
You get the gist."

I smiled, scarcely able to believe a shred of what I'd heard. "So
how many people have you told?"

"Lots. Hell, I wasn't gonna listen to that bunk. I even went back
there that same day. They had a bunch of dump trucks out there in
the canyon, and there were choppers flying around, and I pretty
much figured they were cleaning up the whole place. Some more MPs
stopped me and turned me around. Said that a plane had crashed. A
plane, for Christ's sake. Anyway, that was pretty much the end of
it."

"Nobody got any pictures?"

"Not that I know of."

"No evidence whatsoever."

He shrugged, "I had some evidence, but my place was broken into
about a year back. They ransacked it. Y'know?"

"What did they take?"

"One of those metal shards, you remember?" He motioned with his
hands again. "I was showing it to all my friends, but I don't
have it no more."

I sighed, "That's too bad. My girlfriend... you remember how I
was telling you she's a reporter?"

"Oh... newspapers won't touch this. Don't you think I've tried?"

"She might, but not without hard evidence."

"Even with evidence, somebody will come out and say it's some new
material the military is working on and confiscate it. That
happened with another shard I had. That was before the break-in,
by the way."

I stared at him, eyes narrowing, "How many shards did you take?"

"A couple. That was the one and only smart thing I did that whole
morning."

"And they're all gone?"

"Well... you sure you can get this in the papers?"

Based on a hunk of metal, no I wasn't, but I wasn't about to tell
him that.

"Sure. This could make front page. But I've got to see the
evidence first, just so I know you're not pulling my leg."

I ended up following Hank out to his trailer and helped him dig
up what he said was the last remaining shard. It looked to me
more like a long piece of silver colored glass than anything
else, but it was very thin, about the width of aluminum foil, and
very light, like picking up a piece of plastic. Hank's dog came
out and growled at me for a little while as he leaned the shard
against the mounting lock on his trailer and handed me a crowbar,
"Now whack the hell out of it. Don't worry. You can't break it."
And he was right. It was tough as hell. I shook my head,
wondering what it could possibly be made of.

"Now, when you leave, I'm gonna bury this somewhere else, so
don't you bother trying to sneak back out here and dig it up,
because if you do, I'll shoot you full of holes, and don't think
I won't."

"Don't worry. When I come back out here, I'll bring my girlfriend
and another witness. If there's anything that'll make people
believe your story, it'll be this thing."

