The Amish Spaceman

A WHITE Chevy Malibu stopped in the gravel driveway.

  “I think we should call it quits for the night,” said Chip.

  Billie glanced back at him from the front seat. “That’s because you don’t have a son.”

  “We’re not talking about the Lindberg baby––Dean’s thirty-six. You know what? Forget you people. I’ll take a bus home.”

  Frank tossed the locks of his long brown hair over a shoulder.

  “Nobody’s taking a bus anywhere. A reward is always offered in these kidnapping cases and I’m not letting you collect it by yourself.”

  “But we know he didn’t kidnap her!”

  Frank batted his eyelashes. “That doesn’t mean we won’t get a reward.”

  Steve Dubrowski leaned out of the driver’s window and pointed at a sign above the gate.

  “Anybody read German?”

  “Ins Weltall oder der Tod,” said Billie. “Outer Space or Death––don’t see that on too many ranches.”

  “How do they brand the cattle?” murmured Chip. “Skulls and rocket ships?”

  Billie rolled down the window and spit. “Somebody better know where Dean and that girl landed, or we’re driving back to Hamilton County to scalp one Indian pilot.”

  “He’ll be halfway across the country by now,” said Frank. “I told you we should have dragged him along. Wait––what’s that? I spy with my little eye ...”

  He pointed at the farmhouse with a red-painted fingernail.

  Billie searched her pockets. “I don’t know ... something that begins with clothesline? Jesus wept––I’m out of snuff.”

  “Look closer. That’s the same kind of jumpsuit the Indian pilot was wearing. Next to it on the line is a red dress. The radio said the girl had a red wedding dress.”

  They parked next to the house. Billie took a black automatic from the glove box and stuffed it in the back of her jeans.

  “Time for some shooting and looting,” she said.

  A thumb-sized hole smacked into the windshield, and the glass fractured over the dash in a thousand bouncing pieces.

  “Someone’s way ahead of you!” yelled Chip.

  All four scrambled out of the car and to the front porch of the farmhouse.

  “Talk first,” said Frank. “I don’t want this manicure chipped any more than it already is.”

  Chip watched an Amish man and woman run across a field and into the night. A bullet struck the house and threw splinters across his face, forcing him to duck. When he looked up, the Amish couple were gone.

  “On my count,” said Billie, at the door. “One, two––”

  “Three,” yelled Steve Dubrowski, and smashed his shoulder through the wooden door like a human torpedo.

  Inside the darkened house, a dozen men in suspenders and chinstrap beards crouched near the shattered windows, some with hunting rifles in their hands. At Steve Dubrowski’s loud, wood-shattering entrance, the tallest of these farmers turned and waved a fist.

  “Here come the bastards,” yelled Charlie. “Give ‘em hell, boys!”

  The Amish farmers leaped at Steve, swinging rifles, jabbing pitchforks, and throwing punches in a determined effort to deliver some portion of Hell, or at least evil-smelling brimstone. This might have worked against anyone but Steve Dubrowski.

  A skinny and bookish kid throughout high school, the constant rivalry with Dean for girls that liked skinny and bookish boys had turned him into a college freshman who avoided all social contact. His father forced him to spend a summer teaching English in Beijing, however, and he made many new friends, one of whom was the son of a famous kung fu master, Wie Hit Lo. Steve dove into this new hobby with a passion, and when he returned to college in the fall, found a local teacher to continue his studies of Wounded Duck and Dyspeptic Ocelot styles. He ran marathons and began to gain muscle. By graduation his mastery of fighting had outpaced even that of his original Chinese master. He never won a national championship, but neither did the twelve Amish guys who jumped at him.

  Steve Dubrowski dodged fists and rolled away from haymakers like a duck that really doesn’t want to be there, and smashed jaws, twisted elbows, and kicked groins in the same manner as a jungle cat that has eaten a rotten dodo and is infuriated at the pain in his stomach. In less than twenty seconds he stood alone in the living room, surrounded by sprawled bodies.

  Charlie Snaps His Fingers bowed his head in honor of what he’d just witnessed. Ignoring the continual blast of rifle fire from the windows, he ripped off his farmer’s shirt with one smooth motion, exposing chiseled muscles and the tattoo of a standing wicket over his heart. Charlie calmly walked to the fireplace, grabbed a worn cricket bat that hung above the mantle, and ripped loose a war scream that caused everyone within half a mile to pause and wonder if Predator was actually a documentary.

  Epic combat ensued between the two warriors. Charlie smashed tables with his cricket bat and overturned sofas with great, dangerous strength, and Steve Dubrowski dodged, punched, and kicked like the master of Wounded Duck and Dyspeptic Ocelot he certainly was. Many fists crunched on chins, many ribs felt the polished wood of a bat, and many nipples were tweaked until Billie shot the huge Indian in the leg.

  Steve wiped a trickle of blood from his left eye. “Why in the name of Pauline Calf did you do that?”

  “You were losing,” said Billie, aiming her gun at Charlie on the floor.

  “No. I was winning, you hot-tempered, uncultured––”

  “Mother-in-law with a gun wins the argument,” said Frank.

  He stepped gingerly over the bodies on the floor and placed a red heel on the three-post wicket tattoo over Charlie’s heart.

  “What a strangely tan and muscular young Adonis. I never thought I’d meet someone like you in Kentucky.”

  Charlie held his bloody thigh and grimaced in pain. “What a strangely ignorant and violent group of tourists. I never thought I’d be defeated by an uneducated lout who doesn’t even know Goldbach’s conjecture.”

  “Every even integer greater than two can be expressed as the sum of two primes,” said Steve Dubrowski.

  Charlie nodded. “Well played.”

  Frank put downward pressure on his strappy red heel and Charlie yelped.

  “Tell me where my son is.”

  “I don’t know who YOU are, much less your son.”

  “I’m Fran Cook, Dean’s father.”

  Charlie blinked for several seconds. “Really?”

  “Yes, really, and if you look up my skirt again I’ll have Billie shoot you in a more sensitive area.”

  “They’re locked in a bedroom upstairs.”

  Billie stayed with the wounded man while Steve and Frank searched the rooms.

  “Not here,” yelled Steve, from the top of the stairwell.

  Billie jammed the pistol into Charlie’s tanned jaw. “Not here is not good.”

  “I swear that’s all I know! I locked Dean and the girl in that room myself.”

  “Nice knowing you, weird-looking Amish dude,” said Billie.

  “I don’t think he’s Amish,” said Chip. “Wait! What were they wearing? When we got here, I saw a couple of Amish running across a field.”

  Billie stood up. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Seemed natural that someone would run from gunfire.”

  Charlie grimaced. “If it was the field near the house, they are heading for the river.”