| "Eyes Delighted " |
| by Tom Williams and Willis Couvillier |
Moonwater is an out-of-the-way town, nestled in hilly terrain about 20 miles west of Tikaboo Peak in the southern Nevada desert. A mere fly-spot on the map – and that only on a large-scale map – Moonwater has to borrow law enforcement from the county and boasts precisely one post office, one bar (with restaurant), one motel, one gas station, one used car dealership and enough hard-core, heat dwelling anti-social residents to keep the place going. It is in that special class of places where a traveler, gas nearly gone and starving, will speed up to pass through rather than stop.
However, Moonwater does have one feature that occasionally draws the odd (with the emphasis firmly on odd) visitor: it’s the first town the aliens pass through after they immigrate to Earth.
Elliott Smott had had a long week.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t had any customers; it was that he’d had non-buying customers. Today was Thursday, and the only sale he’d made for the week had come on Monday. And even that one had turned completely to crap on Tuesday.
He paused at the door to the Bar-n-Grill, the only food joint in Moonwater, and looked down the main street toward the west side of town. Nothing was moving on the dry, dusty road. He wryly shook his head and pushed in. The sheriff was late again. But then, his cousin had always had a problem with punctuality.
The crash came even as he was taking a seat at the bar. Wincing at the high-pitched chattering that followed, he looked at Jason, the bartender, incredulously. “You got one of them working here now?”
“It wasn’t my idea!” Jason growled, scowling at a second crash of crockery. When the same sort of chattering followed, the bartender slapped his palms on the bar top, leaned forward, and gave Elliott a less-than-sane look. “It doesn’t shut up! Every time it breaks a dish it yells at itself – and it breaks dishes all the time!”
Elliott eased backwards on the barstool, pondering bolting back to his lot. But after the week he’d had, he needed a drink or three. And his cousin should show up any time now. He hoped. “Take it easy, Big J, it’ll get better.”
Jason smacked the bar top again, in time with another crash of dishes. “It had better…” he said, tone mirroring the intensity of his wild stare, “…get better.”
‘If he reaches for the shotgun,’ thought Elliot, ‘run like hell!’
Work might ease Jason’s mood. “Gimme a brew, J,” he said quickly. “You know the one!”
For a moment the crazy look remained on Jason’s face, then he grunted and went to get the draft. Releasing a subdued sigh of relief, Elliott glanced at the door. No Sheriff Marvin Partman in sight. And, as Elliott found when he looked around the place, no one else was in sight in here, either, apart from Jason, and Maggie, waiting for hungry patrons at the food bar. Elliott gave her a wave as Jason brought over a tall mug.
Elliott carried his beer to a table where he could face the door. After taking a big gulp, he fiddled with the mug, thinking. Considering what was happening to the dishes out back, he couldn’t help but recall Monday’s sale…
#
The Gray had walked onto his used car lot right after he’d opened. The alien had been typical of his kind in most ways: gray bulbous bald head, big black pupil-free eye globes, scrawny little body. He was dressed unusually for his kind: a reversed baseball cap, baggy T-shirt, kid-sized jeans and hi-top sneakers with the laces dragging loose. Unusual, that is, not in what he was wearing, but unusual in how appropriately coordinated the ensemble was. From what Elliot had seen, ash-colored types tended to get their clothing all mixed up, teaming high heels with thick socks, dresses with camouflage pants, that sort of thing.
Grays preferred the hotter areas of the country, particularly the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. To the chagrin of the human residents, this made Moonwater ideal for them, though most aliens moved on when they realized what kind of place it was. Elliott never understood why they hung around there at all. Perhaps it was just another bit of craziness connected with Groom Lake.
In the 10 or so years since the Grays had started immigrating en masse to America, some 50 years after the first crash-landing at Roswell, they had supposedly lived as much like native-born Americans as they could. Apparently doing their best to fit in, they had shunned their own heritage and technology and had taken to wearing American clothes (albeit in a haphazard sort of way) indulging in American customs, partaking in American entertainment – even going so far as to attend football games and other sporting events. But, in Elliott’s opinion, no matter what they did, the Grays could never really fit in. After all, he reasoned, how could anyone who looked like one of them ever hope to be a real American?
“Yo! Dude, you Elliott?” the Gray asked Elliott, who tried not to flinch: that high pitched squeaky tone in their voices always affected him like a fingernail scraping along a chalk board. And for some reason the Grays spoke like people did – or used to – on television. Perhaps the first knowledge they had had of human culture was from all the old television signals unintentionally emitted out into the galaxy. Perhaps they just liked old movies. No one really knew why they assumed these dialects. Elliott had encountered 30s-style gangster aliens, tough talking Western-type hombre aliens, and even groovy hip-cat 60s aliens. This one seemed to have adopted the street-type slang heard in bad television dramas. Well, it was consistent with the clothes at least.
“That’s my picture on the sign, ain’t it?” Elliott didn’t bother with his sales spiel: trying to sell something to this guy would probably be a waste of time. “Whaddaya want?”
“I’s looking for wheels, man. Good wheels.”
“You need a car?”
“Sure, man. How d’ya think I’s gonna get around?”
He had a point. In theory, the Grays who came to Earth were fully-fledged members of human society. They were allowed to legally settle, given the chance to earn a Green Card like any other immigrant… for all purposes a regular person. There were apparently no flying saucers or rocket ships for getting about in once they had arrived. Elliott often wondered whether the Grays flying the transport saucers were dropping off pioneering, back-to-nature-type aliens or nut jobs no one wanted to deal with back wherever the hell it was they came from.
“If you’ve got no ‘wheels,’ how did you get into town, then?” Elliott demanded.
“Hitched, a-course.”
Elliott snorted. “Come on, why would you come to Moonwater?”
“I got me a job. Lissen to the late night radio; I’s gonna be da new DJ.”
“That figures,” Elliott said, shaking his head. “You’re talking about the session where the station plays that ‘youth market’ crap, right? After 9 P.M.?”
“Hey man, hip-hop ain’t crap! It’s da pimp tunes all da kids want!”
“Yeah, OK, whatever. So, just what do you want here? As you can see, most of what I have here are piss-ant soft-top four-wheelers. I cater to the ‘youth market’, too.”
“Soft-top?”
“Yeah. The roof folds back, and the sun and the wind come in. Pain in the ass, if you ask me. But that’s what the kids like.” Well, that and the slightly more pricey vehicles that had that sports car look – forget about performance…
“I get it, my man. I don’t think I need one o’ them. Ain’t you got anything a little… cooler? You know, like, a DJ’s gotta have his look, dude!”
Elliott walked the Gray around the lot, but the alien sniffed at everything shown to him. Elliott began to get annoyed, but kept reminding himself, ‘Elliott, you can use the sale. Money is good, remember, money is good.’ The Gray had already seen at least a dozen vehicles, each suitable for what Elliott imagined the guy’s needs to be, but no, this bozo was as picky as the fussy old broad who once insisted on driving every car on the lot. Elliott considered making some excuse to brush the alien off, regardless of the possibility of a sale, but then he nearly walked full into the Gray’s back. The little guy had stopped dead in his tracks.
“Word! Homey, now that’s me!” the Gray exclaimed, eye globes rigid with excitement.
Elliott looked, but he’d already guessed what the Gray was staring at: an old VW bus with a psychedelic paint job that had made his head spin when he took it in trade. He had just about given up hope of ever getting rid of it, hiding the God-awful thing at the rear of the lot.
“You want… that?” Elliott asked, unable to believe he could be that lucky.
“Yes! A-course!” The Gray walked over to stand beside it. “Like, isn’t it me?” He was all smiles and quivering eye-globes, and his voice had reached a new squeaky high that set Elliot’s teeth on edge.
Elliott refrained from giving an honest answer: that vehicle suited nobody on this Earth – or off it. He looked at the little Gray, there next to the hideous conveyance. Yeah, the guy really did seem to like it. OK then, time to put on the stern face; time for business. If he wanted it – piece of crap or not – he was going to pay for it.
“How you gonna pay for this vehicle?” Elliott demanded. Grays were notoriously tight-fisted, and he was not about to start negotiations unless the alien had sufficient capital.
The customer grinned in the toothless way of his kind and produced a diamond the size of a thumbnail from a pocket of his jeans. Elliott knew without having to examine it that it would be internally flawless and of superlative cut. “With this, man,” the Gray piped. “I’s goin’ to pay with this.”
Elliott smirked. “Nice try. But we humans don’t fall for that one any more. The bottom has fallen out of the diamond market since you guys started dumping those babies on us. It’s all about supply and demand. Automobiles are in demand since they’re scarce, and diamonds aren’t, ‘cause any average income Joe can now afford a three-carat stone for the Mrs. I’ve even bought one for Mrs. Smott. Not that she’s all that grateful on account of it only costing me 50 bucks from some guy in Rachel. Probably cost him a dime from one of you guys.”
It was difficult for a human to read a Gray’s expression, since apart from their eye-globes their faces were all but immobile. However, this Gray did seem unhappy at Elliott having sidestepped his ruse. “Haven’t you got cash?” Elliott asked at last.
The Gray made a whistling sound that might have been a sigh and produced a bulging wallet. They may not have had Greenbacks where they came from, but these aliens sure understood the value of a dollar – and how to maximize it. Diamonds might be cheap as chips now, but there was still a whole lot of money to be made by releasing advanced technology a trickle at a time. The Gray extracted a thick sheaf of hundreds and showed them to Elliott. “How’s this for cash, dude? You take these here?”
“Only if they’re the real McCoy.” Elliott gestured the alien to hand over a couple of the hundreds for inspection. Holding them up to the light, Elliott examined the bills closely. They appeared real enough to his practiced eye. “OK, I’m satisfied. Let’s do business.”
#
Elliott’s reverie was interrupted by his mug beginning to clatter. Grabbing it, he held it steady as jet fighters screamed overhead, trailing the subsonic music that had his drink trying to tap dance on the tabletop. Living with that was just part of being in a town built adjacent to an Air Force restricted zone. It was better than the alternative… As if on cue, there were more crashes of crockery followed by high-pitched alien vocal chatter.
Elliott checked his watch, and then drained off his beer. He got a refill from Jason and returned to wait at the table. If his cuz didn’t show by the time he finished this one, then he was gone. Since Marv had arranged the meet here, the least he could do was be on time. Not that Elliott really wanted to hear any more about the aftermath of his sale to the Gray. He was still pissed about the way he’d been woken on Tuesday morning…
#
‘Whoa! What was that?’
Elliott had woken with a start, damp with sweat from sleeping a warm night without air conditioning (one day he’d have to get the thing fixed). He shook his head, trying to wake himself up, then nearly crapped himself when a heavy fist pounded on his front door. Here he was thinking he’d had a bad dream or something, when all along it was just some jerk thumping on his door way too early in the morning.
Elliott squinted toward the ceiling in the dark, then turned onto his back, slapping a nearly lifeless arm across the spot his wife normally slept. For a second he was confused, then he remembered she was spending the week at her mother’s, in Vegas. Damn, he would have to deal with this himself. Sighing, he got out of bed and began to pull on a pair of pants.
Before he got both legs in, the banging started up again.
“Cut it out!” he yelled. “I’m coming!” More banging. Was this guy deaf or what? “All right, all right!”
With his brain revving up in high-gear, pissed-off mode, Elliott bent down to snatch up his baseball bat from under the bed. This was not the way he had intended to wake up this morning. He hadn’t used the bat in over a year (and not on an actual baseball in more than a decade), but who knew what kind of idiot was waiting for him to open up? He’d just about reached the front door, hopping down the hall with bat under an arm while finishing zipping his trousers, when the racket started up again.
“Who the hell is it?” Elliott demanded belligerently, squinting into the peephole. All he could see was a hat. At least the pounding stopped.
“Sheriff!” replied a gruff voice.
“Marv?” Unlocking the door, Elliott opened it a crack. Two men stood outside: a younger guy he was very familiar with dressed in an olive uniform, and a big middle-aged guy holding a laptop and dressed in a wrinkled suit that looked a lot like Elliott felt right now.
“Can I see some identification?” he asked Wrinkled Suit, ignoring Marv. Surreptitiously, Elliott put the bat down, leaning it against the wall alongside the doorframe. Under the circumstances, it might be a good idea to remain calm, and not show annoyance or that he’d been expecting trouble.
Wrinkled Suit pulled out a badge inscribed, “Harmon Urt, Detective Division.”
Elliott nodded to show he was satisfied. “What’s up?” he asked. “All of my stock is squeaky clean, and I have all the papers.” It wasn’t strictly true, but he thought he could bluff this Urt bozo (and he knew how gullible his cousin was).
“Smott?” Urt demanded in the gruff voice Elliott had heard through the door. “Are you Elliott Smott?”
Elliott opened the door a bit more, nudged his head toward the far corner of the lot. “Yeah. Didn’t you recognize me from the photo on the big sign out there?”
Urt again demonstrated his hearing disability. “Elliott Smott of ‘Elliott’s Auto Sales’?”
“Yeah,” Elliott confirmed again, glancing impatiently at his watch. 6:12 A.M. Confirmation that he was up a good two hours before his usual wake-up time didn’t help with his mood any. And neither did this guy’s attitude. For a second he again considered the baseball bat…
“My name is Urt, Detective Urt,” said Urt. As if that hadn’t been obvious from the badge. “This is Sheriff Partman. I’ve been sent over from Tonopah to follow up on an incident that happened here in Moonwater last night.”
Expression neutral, Elliott’s cousin nodded curtly, seemingly content to go with the show and let the Detective do the talking (or maybe it was too early in the day for him as well). “Can we speak to you for a moment, Smott?” Urt continued.
Elliott opened the door to let them in, shooting a brief, malicious look at his cousin. “Yeah, just get on with it.”
As the pair entered, Elliott flopped onto the sofa he kept in the lounge-cum-reception area. Since there was nowhere else to sit, both cops remained standing.
Sheriff Partman spoke for the first time. “We wake you, Mr. Smott?” Elliott fixed him with a look that could have melted a glacier. He had no shirt on, was wearing rumpled pants and had crazy morning hair. He decided that it wasn’t just squeaky-voiced, ash-colored aliens he didn’t need. “Sorry if we did, but…” Partman went on, flashing a sneaky little grin at Elliott as the other guy stepped over to the reception counter.
Detective Urt, who had placed his laptop on the counter and fired it up, cut the Sheriff short. “OK. We’ll get straight to the point, Smott. Do you own a 1970 VW bus, detailed with a wild paint job?”
Elliott took a moment to answer; he hadn’t really given much thought to why these two were really here. “No… well, I did. Sold it yesterday.”
“Was it to this individual?” Sheriff Partman passed him a photograph. It was a black and white job, grainy like it had been captured and processed from videotape, and showed a Gray wearing a reversed baseball cap and baggy clothes. The alien appeared to be tremendously excited: his eye globes had become flattened, egg-shaped orbs.
“Could’ve been. Those guys all look alike to me.” Elliott handed the photograph back.
“But you sold the vehicle to an alien,” Urt persisted, after typing something out on the keyboard. “To a Gray, I should say.”
“Yeah. Guy said he was goin’ to be a DJ or something. He in trouble?”
Urt chose not to answer that. “Do you have the paperwork from the sale? The vehicle didn’t have anything but the temporary registration on it. We need this Gray’s name and the address he gave.”
“I don’t remember his name,” Elliott grumbled. “G-Lo or G-spot or something. You know they don’t give their real names, since they reckon we can’t pronounce them. Look, I have a girl who does my paper shuffling. Any and all paperwork is in that filing cabinet over there, and she keeps the key. You’ll just have to come by when she gets here in about, say, three hours.” Elliott got up from the sofa and opened the front door. “See you, then, Detective, Sheriff,” he hinted.
For a moment the two law enforcement officers remained where they were, clearly reluctant to get moving.
“Oh, by the way,” Elliott said. “What do you want our little pal for?”
Sheriff Partman did something Elliott didn’t think his cousin would do on duty: he cracked a smile. A tiny snicker escaped him.
“Sheriff!” barked Detective Urt.
Partman regained control, but with obvious effort.
“Well, can’t you say?” Elliott persisted, standing in the doorway, blocking their path. This had to be good, the way they were acting.
Detective Urt glared at Partman, then turned to Elliott. “We think this guy may be the Coconut Bandit. There have been quite a few of these crimes in recent months, same M.O: ram-raid smash and grab. Last night, an alien crashed into the Moonwater Supermart with your VW and snatched up boxes and packages of any product in the place that listed coconut oil among the ingredients. He couldn’t take as much as he probably wanted, though; the crash trashed the vehicle, and he had to escape on foot. Still, he got away with quite a bit of stuff. Then he checked himself out of the Moonwater Motel, where he’d been staying, but not before he’d trashed the place by dumping the contents of what he’d taken on the floor of the room.”
“Coconut?” Elliott asked in disbelief. “Coconut oil? I know they like human stuff, but… I mean, he had a wad of cash. Why wouldn’t he have just bought some?”
Partman was shaking, trying to contain his laughter. Urt glared at him again as a louder snigger escaped. “Who knows why anyone steals when they don’t have to?” the Detective remarked testily. “The thrill? The restriction? We’ll get it outta the little bastard when we catch up with him.” He jerked his head toward the door, a gesture directed at the Sheriff, and Elliott moved out of their way. “Yeah, and I’ll send someone by tomorrow for those papers.”
“But, hey,” Elliott said, “what’s the deal with the coconut?” And after a moment’s thought added, “And what ‘restriction’ were you talking about?”
Partman guffawed openly now. Urt paused with ill-concealed impatience but chose to reply. “Experts have told us that coconut oil has an odd effect on Grays’ metabolism. It affects a Gray so drastically that products with coconut oil are restricted from being sold to them.”
Elliott had never heard of that. “What sort of effect?”
“Oh, for Chrissake,” said Urt with a sigh. “Show him the other pictures, Partman.”
Still sniggering, Sheriff Partman pushed past Elliott, leaving the room. Shortly, he returned with a packet of photographs that he handed to Elliott. All were like the one they had shown him earlier, grainy, black and white. “These from a surveillance camera, or something?” he asked.
Sheriff Partman, still smiling and red of cheek, nodded an affirmative. Elliott ruffled through the photographs.
One showed a familiar-looking VW with an unfamiliar bashed-in front resting amongst the shattered remains of a storefront window and a couple of checkout counters. Another photograph showed an alien carrying an armful of packages toward the bus. A third picture, a zoom-in, showed the same alien sitting cross-legged in front of the damaged vehicle; various open packages littered the floor around him. Peering closer, Elliott saw there were a couple of half-eaten cookies amidst the litter, and it looked as if the Gray had smeared cooking lard on his face and arms. His eye globes had flattened almost into a horizontal line.
Eyebrows raised in silent question, Elliott held out that photo to his cousin.
The Sheriff could barely contain his amusement. “Sunblock lotion. PF 50, I believe.”
“Let me guess,” Elliott said slowly. “Coconut gets ‘em off? Is that it?”
“Got it in one!” said Partman, snorting. “Only the expert says it has an ‘aggressively aphrodisiac’ effect on them. He must have got over it, though, because he’d scooted by the time I got there in the patrol car.”
“Aphrodisiac, huh?” Elliott said, handing back the photos.
“Yeah,” Partman chortled. “You should see the reports! The female clerk at the motel said, ‘It was so weird! He just stared at my chest and said it was such a delight for him to see eye to eye with me since he was so short!’ An elderly homeless woman said that when he ran around the back of the supermarket, he goosed her as she was bent over a dumpster. Said it was the only action she’d seen in… “
“Sheriff!” barked Detective Urt as he shut down the laptop. “Let’s go! Now!”
“Yessir!” Partman replied, and then, as he was about to follow the Detective, added in an aside to his cousin, “Talk to ya more later, Ell!”
#
Watching the doorway to the bar, an annoyed but mildly bemused Elliott thought about Tuesday. Coconut oil an aphrodisiac? All that ruckus because of that? He shook his head and took another swig from his mug. It amazed him what went on in the world sometimes, it really did.
Tossing back the last of the beer, Elliott stood up, digging out a 20 to toss on the table. He wasn’t going to waste his time any longer; if Marv wanted to talk, he could come by the lot. It was too blasted hot tonight, anyway. He still didn’t get why some jumped-up detective would come see him about the Coconut Bandit thing. Sure, he was a little used to odd things happening around here, what with being so close to Area 51, but this was just plain confusing. What was next: some government jock showing up to haul him off as being an accessory to coconut terrorism? He looked back to the bar, thinking he’d point out the 20 to Jason.
Another breakage sounded out back. Jason smacked the bar top, hard, and began to reach underneath...
Elliott decided Big J could find the 20 on his own.
As he turned to leave, Sheriff Marv Partman was entering the bar. A suited man accompanied him, a man bearing a briefcase and an aloof, unsmiling expression. With crazy thoughts in mind about coconut-oil drenched terrorists and Homeland Security shutting down his lot, Elliott sidled toward the exit.
“Ell…”
Elliott cut Marv off. “Sheriff, you may find it useful to have a word with Jason.” He nodded toward the bar, where Jason had produced his shotgun. While Marv and his new friend snapped on their “police-faced-with-a-firearm” expressions, Elliott took off out the door.
He wasn’t going to hang around. It was not like he could help any. After all, he was just a used car dealer.
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