The True Meaning of Smekday

  “Should’ve offered yesterday. Not hospitable of me.”

  I gulped down the water.

  “Well…not to be rude, but you don’t really have a reputation for hospitality around here. I mean, I guess it’s a part of your…of who you—”

  He stood staring down at me for a moment, his face dark with the sun behind his straw hair.

  “The shouting, you mean.”

  “Right,” I said. “What’s the deal with that?”

  “Hobby,” said the Chief. “I’m retired.”

  “You didn’t raise your voice once when it was just the three of us. Well, you did a bit during your whole carnival spiel. Which could use some work, if you ask me.”

  He huffed.

  “But then Vicki and Kat show up and you’re all, ‘GO AWAY, TREATY-BREAKER! DON’T…UM…DON’T—”

  “I never said ‘treaty-breaker.’”

  “Yeah, well, that was the basic theme, anyway.”

  “I only usually shout at the white people,” he said. “Tradition. I’ve got no beef with you.”

  “I’m half white,” I said, folding my arms.

  “Hrrm. Which half?”

  I blinked. “Uh…dunno. Let’s say it’s from the waist down.”

  Chief Shouting Bear nodded. “Deal. I only hate your legs.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, during which I could hear him breathe like an old house.

  “I’m Gratuity,” I said. “People call me Tip. And that’s Pig in the car.”

  “Frank,” he answered, and offered his hand. I shook it.

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought…I heard…”

  “You heard my name was Chief Shouting Bear,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You can call me whatever you want, Stupidlegs.”

  “Deal.”

  J.Lo approached and tapped the Chief’s elbow.

  “Hey, Spook,” said the Chief. J.Lo handed him a small card I’d helped him write. With the way the Roswell BOOBs looked at him every time he opened his mouth, we agreed he shouldn’t push his luck with the Chief.

  “My name is JayJay,” read the Chief in a monotone. “I am ten years old. I have taken a vow of silence and wear this costume in solidarity with our Boovish cousins in their fight against the wicked Gorg.”

  The Chief gave the card back. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Hell, I wore a feather headdress for a while in the sixties.”

  I popped the hood on Slushious, careful not to make all the tires fall off, while the Chief closed and latched the gates again.

  “You say a Boov modified this for you?” he asked as he stepped up.

  “Yeah. In Pennsylvania.”

  “An’ it’s broken.”

  “Right. Still floats, but doesn’t drive anymore.”

  “An’ it was broken yesterday, when you tried to sell it to me?”

  “Um…yeah.”

  “Hrm.”

  He poked at hoses and unfastened gaskets. I sincerely hoped he wasn’t doing anything dangerous, because J.Lo was suddenly nowhere to be seen. I expected he’d slipped off to examine the teleclone booth again.

  “Should be something here,” the Chief said, pointing to the housing for the Snark’s Adjustable Manifold. “That’s how come it won’t drive.”

  I blinked. That was how come it didn’t drive, but how could he know that? Of course, there was sort of a gaping hole in the middle of the hood. It wouldn’t take a rocketpod scientist to see Slushious was missing something.

  “Hey, you’re pretty good,” I said. “We had to get rid of that part after it started exploding too much. How’d you guess?”

  “Could tell you,” said the Chief, “but then I’d have to start shouting again.”

  I frowned.

  “That’s a weird thing to say.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  I’d thought Lincoln was off somewhere with J.Lo, but suddenly he was at our sides, barking his head off. The Chief had his head buried under the hood, but he looked back over his shoulder.

  “Lincoln—what’s wrong with you?” he said, and spat. “Doesn’t usually bark much.”

  “Chief,” I said, my voice thin.

  Gorg jetpackers buzzed over Roswell like flies at a picnic. And one of them had broken away from the rest to head right for the junkyard.

  Chief Shouting Bear saw him too, and sped immediately toward the house.

  “Gotta move the booth,” he said. “You hide under the car.”

  “Chief!”

  He skidded to a halt and looked back.

  “They’re hunting cats,” I breathed.

  A moment passed, and he rushed back. Pig didn’t want to leave the car with Lincoln near, so I had to pull her out with a floor mat still attached to her feet. The Chief scooped her up and ran off again.

  “Under the car!” he ordered.

  He didn’t have to tell me a third time. I dropped to my hands and knees and slid under Slushious, choking on dust.

  It was very quiet. I only noticed the birds had been singing when they abruptly stopped.

  I don’t know what I’d expected it to feel like, with Slushious floating over me. I don’t think I’d expected anything at all. But it was cold, like standing in front of a refrigerator.

  Somewhere behind me I heard exactly the sound of a Gorg wearing a jetpack land in the yard.

  I tried not to breathe. I tried not to think about the way my lungs felt scratchy with New Mexico dirt. Then it was suddenly bright. Slushious was shoved aside, and I squinted up at the ugliest face in the universe.

  J.Lo disagrees with me about this. He says the title of Most Ugliest goes to the Goozmen of the Crab Nebula, which are apparently just blobs of carbon. But I could see how a blob of carbon might look nice with soft lighting. What stood over me was a Gorg, and he looked like a half ton of anger in bicycle shorts.

  He was a dull olive green, with bloodred splotches around his head and shoulders. Here and there he had thick purplish plates growing out of his skin like giant fingernails. If creatures really evolve to suit their surroundings, then the Nimrogs surely were a race of backstabbers, the way their backsides were covered in armor and horns.

  I didn’t know if I should stay down or get up, but then he helped me decide by nearly yanking my arm out at the shoulder. I found my feet but avoided looking him in the eyes.

  “HUMAN!” Gorg barked. When he spoke, his frowning mouth gaped like a fish. “WHERE IS THE STOLEN BOOTH!”

  Oh, I thought. My eyes began to water. The stink coming off him could perm your hair.

  “Um…what now?”

  “ARE YOU LOUD BEAR CHIEFTAIN?!” said Gorg, cracking his knuckles. They made a sound so low you could feel it in your bones.

  “Who?”

  “CHIEFTAIN LOUD BEAR MAN!”

  Gorg paced around me, scanning the piles of junk and scrap. He seemed especially taken with Bathhenge. I didn’t know where the Chief was hiding Pig and the booth, but I didn’t think he’d had enough time.

  “I, uh, I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said. “You must have the wrong place.”

  He trod forward on thick legs and bent over me. I did my best to look calm on the outside, but my insides were dancing and throwing off sparks like a fork in a microwave.

  “IT IS NOT THE WRONG PLACE. YOU ARE THE WRONG PLACE!”

  “Um.”

  “I WAS TOLD TO FIND THE SHOUTING ANIMAL MAN IN HIS GARBAGE COOP!”

  “I’m sorry, but—I’m sorry!” I yelped and skipped backward as Gorg advanced on me. “You were given bad information. Probably some human’s fault.”

  “I AM PRINCIPAL ANGER COORDINATOR ASSOCIATE-OF-THE-MONTH GORG FOUR-GORG! HUMANS WILL GIVE ME BAD INFORMATION AT THEIR PERIL!”

  He didn’t look like a principal. He looked like something Hercules ought to be wrestling on the side of a vase.

  Gorg bent further and raised a fist over my head. He’s bluffing, I thought. It’s just to scare me into changing my story. To make
me blurt something out. I straightened up as tall as I could and breathed through my mouth. I looked him right in the eye. And when I couldn’t bear that, I looked him right in the nose.

  You have a ridiculous nose, I thought, tears running down my face. Look at it. It’s like an oak leaf made out of steak.

  And suddenly it was as if I had mental powers. Gorg’s nose twitched. It twitched again. He scrunched his whole face, and his nose closed up like a Venus flytrap.

  Then his torso snapped back and forward again, and he made the weirdest, wettest noise I ever heard. It must have been a sneeze, but it sounded like an elephant being forced through a drinking straw.

  “WHERE IS IT?” Gorg howled, looking at my feet.

  I looked too, confused. If he meant the booth, I sure wasn’t standing on it.

  “Where is what?”

  “ANSWER ME, BOY! THE GORG ARE NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH!”

  I scowled. “I’m a girl.”

  He leaned in close, looking me over, breathing on my hair. Something like molasses ran from his bat face.

  “YOU ALL LOOK THE SAME.”

  “Ha! You’re one to talk.”

  “YES, WE ARE!” he bellowed. “THE GORG ARE GREAT ONES FOR TALKING! TALKING AND POUNDING!”

  “Hey!” came a shout from the house, and I exhaled. Later I’d wish the Chief had stayed hidden, but at the time all I felt was relief. If my thoughts could have formed words they’d have said, Please, treat me like a child. Come save me.

  “Leave her be!” shouted Chief Shouting Bear, striding toward us. “Y’wanna deal with someone, you deal with—”

  Gorg’s great trunk of an arm swung fast and wide, and struck the Chief in the head. He was felled with one blow.

  I’m sorry for that word “felled.” I only looked it up just now. I had to have just the right one to do this justice. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right? Didn’t write any decent girl characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine.

  The Gorg felled Chief Shouting Bear. The Chief’s legs shot up from under him, and he came down hard on his back with a sound louder than I thought a human body could make. Then he lay there. There was a red X on his forehead, getting larger, and it was the only thing that moved.

  “DO NOT BE IMPUDENT, BOY. THE GORG CAN DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO YOU.”

  I had been thinking of something clever to say, but now that part of my brain was static. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open.

  Gorg squinted some more at me, then nodded, satisfied. He turned on his heel and thundered off like an angry building. He turned Slushious over and scattered the piles of scrap metal. He threw washing machines like huge dice and cracked each bathtub with a blow from his fist. Large sections of the outer fence fell under a volley of tires and engine blocks. Then he knocked a wall of the Chief’s house in with a rusted-out town car and took the rest of it apart, piece by piece. When there was no longer any house standing, I wondered what had become of J.Lo and Pig. And Lincoln. And the booth. Gorg tore the basement door off its hinges and squeezed down the stairs. Angry noises roared up from below until he emerged a minute later. Finally, with everything in ruins, Gorg looked around to where I sat pressing the Chief’s hat to his head. Then he grunted and went back into the sky, where he belonged.

  Seconds stretched out like little lifetimes as I crouched there on my legs and willed the Chief to wake up and be fine. Suddenly J.Lo was at my side, holding Pig.

  “Run get his bedsheets, or a towel,” I said. J.Lo dropped Pig and ran off. Pig went and hid inside Slushious when Lincoln returned from wherever he’d been hiding and licked the Chief’s head.

  “No, Lincoln…don’t…”

  J.Lo arrived trailing a white bedsheet. I bunched it up and pressed hard onto the head wound. Right away the sheet blossomed like a red carnation.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I think we need to take him into town.”

  We tied Lincoln to something heavy and managed to get Slushious right-side up with nothing more remarkable than a tire jack. The car was in sad shape now. The left side fin was crushed again, and the roof was crumpled like a paper sack. But it still floated, and it was the only way we were going to get one hundred and fifty pounds of unconscious Indian to the UFO museum.

  We spread out the bedsheet and slipped it under the Chief’s body. It was only then that I noticed the two circular cuts in the fabric.

  “This is your ghost costume. You’re not wearing your ghost costume.”

  “No. I will get outfrom Slushious befores we arrive. I will hide.”

  We needed a ramp to get the Chief into the hatchback. Luckily, we were surrounded by a little of everything. J.Lo stacked sections of white PVC pipe up an old refrigerator door, and we rolled the Chief in.

  We got a good start, coasting down the shallow hill with the setting sun behind us. I kept checking the movement of the Chief’s chest in the mirror. Then I looked at J.Lo.

  “Where were you? Could you see everything?” I asked.

  “Only did I hear,” said J.Lo. “I hid. I feared the Gorg might smell me. They haves very good noses.”

  “Not this one,” I murmured. “He had a cold.”

  “Get out of town.”

  “He did. He had a cold.”

  “He could no have had this. The Gorg do not get sick.”

  “He sneezed.”

  “Tip was probably very scared. Imagined it.”

  “I did not—”

  I paused when I noticed we were nearing one of those mechanical cat hunters.

  “Get Pig down. Hold her there. Shoot, we should have left her at the scrap yard.”

  “No Gorg around,” said J.Lo. “A few cat robots, but no Gorg.”

  “Suits me.”

  “I also. But if the Gorg have put onto the land a working telecloner, they could be everyplace. Why not for?”

  “Maybe Gorg don’t like being around Gorg any more than we do. C’mon, we need to run some more.”

  Another ten minutes and we were close to Vicki’s apartment and the UFO museum.

  “You better get out here,” I said. “Take your toolbox and go see if you can find some food and water, and a police car or something we can borrow. Please,” I added.

  J.Lo ran off, and I started shouting.

  “Hey! Anybody! Help! Heeeelp!”

  The combined members of BOOB, Roswell Chapter, came running out of the museum.

  “Oh, man,” said Trey when he saw the Chief. “What happened?”

  “He tried to stop a Gorg from hurting me,” I said.

  “What’s a Gorg? Are those the new aliens?”

  “You saw one up close?” squealed one of the boys.

  “It tried to hurt you? Cool!”

  “Boys, quiet,” said Beardo.

  “Hey, Chief,” said Kat as she and Trey eased him out of the car.

  “Hey,” said the Chief.

  “He’s awake?” I shouted, and ran to the Chief’s side.

  “Hey, Stupidlegs.”

  He was slurring his speech a little.

  “Has he been drinking?” asked Vicki, who’d just come across the street. I gave her a dirty look but it bounced right off her. I was so mad I could have spit acid.

  “No, Vicki,” Beardo said. “He got hit by one of the big aliens.”

  “Don’t you look at me like that. I was just asking is all. Indians drink—I saw a special about it.”

  Chief Shouting Bear was carried into the UFO museum and over to the alien autopsy exhibit. The fake dead alien was pushed aside and the Chief was placed on the gurney. The adults leaned over him while the boys, already bored, moved into the lobby to play some kind of slapping game they’d invented.

  “God, he probably has a concussion,” said Trey. “You shouldn’t even have moved him.”

  “Well, I couldn’t call an ambulance, could I?”
I said. “How did the Gorg know where to find him, anyway? They knew his name and everything.”

  No one answered, but all eyes turned to Vicki Lightbody. She picked at a hangnail and didn’t meet our gaze, but I understood. She mumbled something about checking on Andromeda, and left the museum.

  I sighed. “Can anyone help him?”

  “Just need a bag of ice,” said the Chief. “Got any ice?”

  “I don’t know, Chief,” said Kat. “I don’t think anyone has ice.”

  “Go outside,” he said. “Get some snow.”

  Everyone exchanged worried looks.

  “And whiskey,” the Chief added. “Ask one of the pilots.”

  “Can anybody help him?” I asked again.

  “I can,” said Trey. “My ex-girlfriend was a nursing student.”

  “That doesn’t really count, Trey.”

  “Can any of you do better?” he snapped. “I used to quiz her before tests, and before the big exam. I’m practically a nurse myself.”

  The Chief looked up at my face.

  “Always said you were the prettiest nurse,” he creaked. “Don’t care what the other boys think.”

  I wiped at my wet eyes with the heel of my hand.

  “Don’t tell anyone I said,” he added. “Gota girl back home.”

  “Chief,” said Kat, and the Chief blinked his eyes a couple times. He looked around at the other faces.

  “Chief,” said Kat, “do you know what year it is?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What’s the president’s name?” Beardo said. “The last one.”

  “Roosevelt,” said the Chief. Beardo frowned.

  “Roosevelt was the last real president,” the Chief said. “Every one since has been a jackass.”

  When it became clear that Trey really did know what he was doing, I relaxed a little. Beardo and I walked out to the street.

  “We all have to get out of Roswell as soon as possible,” he said. “It’s getting dangerous. Those…Gorg?…were flying around all afternoon, shooting at cats. You’d better keep a close eye on yours.”

  “What, were they eating them?” I asked. “I thought they liked cats.”

  “I think they just like shooting them. I mean, after those guns erase them, there’s nothing to eat.”

  “Erase them?”

  “Yeah,” said Beardo, looking up at the stars. “You’ve seen how those guns work, right? No noise, but they make stuff disappear? Kat thinks they emit antimatter particles. I don’t know.”