Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

  RHONDA RAMEY, CHERRY’S BEST friend, joined the UFO Club first. Rhonda and Cherry are a lot alike, although it’s hard to see this at first. While Cherry is short and peppy, Rhonda is tall, thin, and listless. She looks like Cher. Rhonda doesn’t have any children. She’s crazy about her husband, Bill, but he’s a work-aholic who runs a string of video rental stores all over northern Mississippi, so he’s gone a lot, and Rhonda gets bored. She works out at the spa, but it isn’t enough. Maybe this is why she got so interested when the UFO landed at a farm outside her mother’s hometown of Como. It was first spotted by sixteen-year-old Donnie Johnson just at sunset, as he was finishing his chores on his parents’ farm. He heard a loud rumbling sound “in the direction of the hog house,” it said in the paper. Looking up, he suddenly saw a “brilliantly lit mushroom-shaped object” hovering about two feet above the ground, with a shaft of white light below and glowing all over with an intensely bright multicolored light, “like the light of a welder’s arc.”

  Donnie said it sounded like a jet. He was temporarily blinded and paralyzed. He fell down on the ground. When he came back to his senses again, it was gone. Donnie staggered into the kitchen where his parents, Durel, fifty-four, and Erma, forty-nine, were eating supper and told them what had happened. They all ran back outside to the field, where they found four large imprints and four small imprints in the muddy ground, and a nearby clump of sage grass on fire. The hogs were acting funny, bunching up, looking dazed. Immediately, Durel jumped in his truck and went to get the sheriff, who came right back with two deputies. All in all, six people viewed the site while the brush continued to burn, and who knows how many people — half of Como — saw the imprints the next day. Rhonda saw them too. She drove out to the Johnson farm with her mother, as soon as she heard about it.

  It was a close encounter of the second kind, according to Civil Air Patrol head Glenn Raines, who appeared on TV to discuss it, because the UFO “interacted with its surroundings in a significant way.” A close encounter of the first kind is simply a close-range sighting, while a close encounter of the third kind is something like the famous example, of Betty and Barney Hill of Exeter, New Hampshire, who were actually kidnapped by a UFO while they were driving along on a trip. Betty and Barney Hill were taken aboard the alien ship and given physical exams by intelligent humanoid beings. Two hours and thirty-five minutes were missing from their trip, and afterward, Betty had to be treated for acute anxiety. Glenn Raines, wearing his brown Civil Air Patrol uniform, said all this on TV.

  His appearance, plus what had happened at the Johnson farm, sparked a rash of sightings all across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas for the next two years. Metal disc-like objects were seen, and luminous objects appearing as lights at night. In Levelland, Texas, fifteen people called the police to report an egg-shaped UFO appearing over State Road 1173. Overall, the UFOs seemed to show a preference for soybean fields and teenage girl viewers. But a pretty good photograph of a UFO flying over the Gulf was taken by a retired man from Pascagoula, so you can’t generalize. Clubs sprang up all over the place. The one that Rhonda and Cherry went to had seventeen members and met once a month at the junior high school.

  Tammy recalls exactly how her mama and Rhonda acted the night they came home from Cherry’s first meeting. Cherry’s eyes sparkled in her face like Brenda Starr’s eyes in the comics. She started right in telling Tammy all about it, beginning with the Johnsons from Como and Betty and Barney Hill.

  Tammy was not impressed. “I don’t believe it,” she said. She was president of the Science Club at the junior high school.

  “You are the most irritating child!” Cherry said. “What don’t you believe?”

  “Well, any of it,” Tammy said then. “All of it,” and this has remained her attitude ever since.

  “Listen, honey, Jimmy Carter saw one,” Cherry said triumphantly. “In nineteen seventy-one, at the Executive Mansion in Georgia. He turned in an official report on it.”

  “How come nobody knows about it, then?” Tammy asked. She was a tough customer.

  “Because the government covered it up!” said Rhonda, just dying to tell this part. “People see UFOs all the time, it’s common knowledge, they are trying to make contact with us right now, honey, but the government doesn’t want the average citizen to know about it. There’s a big cover-up going on.”

  “It’s just like Watergate.” Cherry opened a beer and handed it over to Rhonda.

  “That’s right,” Rhonda said, “and every time there’s a major incident, you know what happens? These men from the government show up at your front door dressed all in black. After they get through with you, you’ll wish you never heard the word saucer. You turn pale and get real sick. You can’t get anything to stay on your stomach.”

  Tammy cracked up. But Rhonda and Cherry went on and on. They had official-looking gray notebooks to log their sightings in. At their meetings, they reported these sightings to each other, and studied up on the subject in general. Somebody in the club was responsible for the educational part of each meeting, and somebody else brought the refreshments.

  Tammy Lynn learned to keep her mouth shut. It was less embarrassing than belly dancing; she had a friend whose mother took belly dancing at the YMCA. Tammy did not tell her mama about all the rational explanations for UFOs that she found in the school library. They included: (1) hoaxes; (2) natural phenomena, such as fungus causing the so-called fairy rings sometimes found after a landing; (3) real airplanes flying off course; and Tammy’s favorite, (4) the Fata Morgana, described as a “rare and beautiful type of mirage, constantly changing, the result of unstable layers of warm and cold air. The Fata Morgana takes its name from fairy lore and is said to evoke in the viewer a profound sense of longing,” the book went on to say. Tammy’s biology teacher, Mr. Owens, said he thought that the weather patterns in Mississippi might be especially conducive to this phenomenon. But Tammy kept her mouth shut. And after a while, when nobody in the UFO Club saw anything, its membership declined sharply. Then her mama met Harold Stikes, then Harold Stikes left his wife and children and moved out to the farm with them, and sometimes Cherry forgot to attend the meetings, she was so happy with Harold Stikes.

  Tammy couldn’t see why, initially. In her opinion, Harold Stikes was about as interesting as a telephone pole. “But he’s so nice!” Cherry tried to explain it to Tammy Lynn. Finally Tammy decided that there is nothing in the world that makes somebody as attractive as if they really love you. And Harold Stikes really did love her mama, there was no question. That old man — what a crazy old Romeo! Why, he proposed to Cherry when she was still in the hospital after she had her breast removed (this was back when they thought that was it, that the doctors had gotten it all).

  “Listen, Cherry,” he said solemnly, gripping a dozen red roses. “I want you to marry me.”

  “What?” Cherry said. She was still groggy.

  “I want you to marry me,” Harold said. He knelt down heavily beside her bed.

  “Harold! Get up from there!” Cherry said. “Somebody will see you.”

  “Say yes,” said Harold.

  “I just had my breast removed.”

  “Say yes,” he said again.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Cherry said.

  And as soon as she got out of the hospital, they were married out in the orchard, on a beautiful April day, by Lew Uggams, a JP from out of town. They couldn’t find a local preacher to do it. The sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. Nobody was invited except Stan, Tammy, Rhonda and Bill, and Cherry’s mother, who wore her dress inside out. Cherry wore a new pink lace dress, the color of cherry blossoms. Tough little Tammy cried and cried. It’s the most beautiful wedding she’s ever seen, and now she’s completely devoted to Harold Stikes.

  SO TAMMY LEAVES THE lights on for Harold when she finally goes to bed that night. She tried to wait up for him, but she has to go to school in the morning, she’s got a chemistry test. Her mamaw is sound asleep in the little added-on ba
by room that Buddy Oxendine built for Cherry. Gladys acts like a baby now, a spoiled baby at that. The only thing she’ll drink is Sprite out of a can. She talks mean. She doesn’t like anything in the world except George and Tammy, the two remaining cockapoos.

  They bark up a storm when Harold finally gets back out to the farm, at one thirty. The cockapoos are barking, Cherry’s mom is snoring like a chain saw. Harold doesn’t see how Tammy Lynn can sleep through all of this, but she always does. Teenagers can sleep through anything. Harold himself has started waking up several times a night, his heart pounding. He wonders if he’s going to have a heart attack. He almost mentioned his symptoms to Lois Hickey last week, in fact, but then thought, What the hell. His heart is broken. Of course it’s going to act up some. And everything, not only his heart, is out of whack. Sometimes he’ll break into a sweat for no reason. Often he forgets really crucial things, such as filing his quarterly estimated income tax on January 15. Harold is not the kind to forget something that important. He has strange aches that float from joint to joint. He has headaches. He’s lost twelve pounds. Sometimes he has no appetite at all. Other times, like right now, he’s just starving.

  Harold goes in the kitchen and finds a flat rectangular casserole, carefully wrapped in tinfoil, on the counter, along with a Tupperware cake carrier. He lifts off the top of the cake carrier and finds a piña colada cake, his favorite. Then he pulls back the tinfoil on the casserole. Lasagna! Plenty is left over. Harold sticks it in the microwave. He knows that the cake and the la sagna were left here by his ex-wife. Ever since Cherry has been in Intensive Care, Joan has been bringing food out to the farm. She comes when Harold’s at work or at the hospital, and leaves it with Gladys or Tammy. She probably figures that Harold would refuse it, if she caught him at home, which he would. She’s a great cook, though. Harold takes the lasagna out of the microwave, opens a beer, and sits down at the kitchen table. He loves Joan’s lasagna. Cherry’s idea of a terrific meal is one she doesn’t have to cook. Harold remembers eating in bed with Cherry, tacos from Taco Bell, sour-cream-and-onion chips, beer. He gets more lasagna and a big wedge of piña colada cake.

  Now it’s two thirty, but for some reason Harold is not a bit sleepy. His mind whirls with thoughts of Cherry. He snaps off all the lights and stands in the darkened house. His heart is racing. Moonlight comes in the windows, it falls on the old patterned rug. Outside, it’s as bright as day. He puts his coat on and goes out, with the cockapoos scampering along beside him. They are not even surprised. They think it’s a fine time for a walk. Harold goes past the mailbox, down the dirt road between the fields. Out here in the country, the sky is both bigger and closer than it is in town. Harold feels like he’s in a huge bowl turned upside down, with tiny little pinpoints of light shining through. And everything is silvered by the moonlight — the old fenceposts, the corn stubble in the flat long fields, a distant barn, the highway at the end of the dirt road, his own strange hand when he holds it out to look at it.

  He remembers when she waited on him in the Food Lion deli, three years ago. He had asked for a roast beef sandwich, which come prepackaged. Cherry put it on his plate. Then she paused, and cocked her hip, and looked at him. “Can I give you some potato salad to go with that?” she asked. “Some slaw?”

  Harold looked at her. Some red curls had escaped the required net. “Nothing else,” he said.

  But Cherry spooned a generous helping of potato salad onto his plate. “Thank you so much,” he said. They looked at each other.

  “I know I know you,” Cherry said.

  It came to him then. “Cherry Oxendine,” said Harold. “I remember you from high school.”

  “Lord, you’ve got a great memory, then!” Cherry had an easy laugh. “That was a hundred years ago.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it.” Harold knew he was holding up the line.

  “Depends on who you’re talking to,” Cherry said.

  Later that day, Harold found an excuse to go back over to the deli for coffee and apple pie, then he found an excuse to look through the personnel files. He started eating lunch at the deli every day, without making any conscious decision to do so. In the afternoons, when he went back for coffee, Cherry would take her break and sit at a table with him.

  Harold and Cherry talked and talked. They talked about their families, their kids, high school. Cherry told him everything that had happened to her. She was tough and funny, not bitter or self-pitying. They talked and talked. In his whole life, Harold had never had so much to say. During this period, which lasted for several weeks, his whole life took on a heightened aspect. Everything that happened to him seemed significant, a little incident to tell Cherry about. Every song he liked on the radio he remembered, so he could ask Cherry if she liked it too. Then there came the day when they were having coffee and she mentioned she’d left her car at Al’s Garage that morning to get a new clutch.

  “I’ll give you a ride over there to pick it up,” said Harold instantly. In his mind he immediately canceled the sales meeting he had scheduled for four o’clock.

  “Oh, that’s too much trouble,” Cherry said.

  “But I insist.” In his conversations with Cherry, Harold had developed a brand-new gallant manner he had never had before.

  “Well, if you’re sure it’s not any trouble . . .” Cherry grinned at him like she knew he really wanted to do it, and that afternoon when he grabbed her hand suddenly before letting her out at Al’s Garage, she did not pull away.

  The next weekend Harold took her up to Memphis and they stayed at the Peabody Hotel, where Cherry got the biggest kick out of the ducks in the lobby and ordering from room service.

  “You’re a fool,” Harold’s friends told him later, when the shit hit the fan.

  But Harold didn’t think so. He doesn’t think so now, walking the old dirt road on the Oxendine farm in the moonlight. He loves his wife. He feels that he has been ennobled and enlarged, by knowing Cherry Oxendine. He feels like he has been specially selected among men, to receive a precious gift. He stepped out of his average life for her, he gave up being a good man, but the rewards have been extraordinary. He’s glad he did it. He’d do it all over again.

  Still walking, Harold suddenly knows that something is going to happen. But he doesn’t stop walking. Only, the whole world around him seems to waver a bit, and intensify. The moonlight shines whiter than ever. A little wind whips up out of nowhere. The stars are twinkling so brightly that they seem to dance, actually dance, in the sky. And then, while Harold watches, one of them detaches itself from the rest of the sky and grows larger, moves closer, until it’s clear that it is actually moving across the sky, at an angle to the earth. A falling star, perhaps? A comet?

  Harold stops walking. The star moves faster and faster, with an erratic pattern. It’s getting real close now. It’s no star. Harold hears a high whining noise, like a blender. The cockapoos huddle against his ankles. They don’t bark. Now he can see the blinking red lights on the top of it, and the beam of white light shooting out the bottom. His coat is blown straight out behind him by the wind. He feels like he’s going blind. He shields his eyes. At first it’s as big as a barn, then a tobacco warehouse. It covers the field. Although Harold can’t say exactly how it communicates to him or even if it does, suddenly his soul is filled to bursting. The ineffable occurs. And then, more quickly than it came, it’s gone, off toward Carrollton, rising into the night, leaving the field, the farm, the road. Harold turns back.

  It will take Cherry Oxendine two more weeks to die. She’s tough. And even when there’s nothing left of her but her heart, she will fight all the way. She will go out furious, squeezing Harold’s hand at the very moment of death, clinging fast to every minute of this bright, hard life. And although at first he won’t want to, Harold will go on living. He will buy another store. Gladys will die. Tammy Lynn will make Phi Beta Kappa. Harold will start attending the Presbyterian church again. Eventually Harold may even go back to his family, but he wil
l love Cherry Oxendine until the day he dies, and he will never, ever, tell anybody what he saw.

  Folk Art

  Lord have mercy! You liked to scared me to death! Come on out of there this minute. You’re tramping on my daylilies. There now. That’s better. Let me get a good look at you. You don’t say! Why you don’t look hardly old enough to be a art professor, I’ll tell you that. I would of took you for a boy. Just a little old art boy, how’s that? Me, I’m Lily Lockhart. I reckon you know that already. How’d you get in here anyway? Well, it don’t matter. Honey, you have come to the right place! Art is my life, if I do say so myself.

  Why sure, I’ll be glad to show you around my backyard, now that you’ve got in here. It’d be my pleasure. It’s not much to see, though. Not much to show somebody like you. Why thank you. I appreciate that. Mama planted a lot of them herself. She used to say, “Lily, I want our backyard to look just like the Garden of Eden.” That’s bee balm. Mama planted it years and years ago. Them wild spiky flowers, them’s cleomes. And these here is holly-hocks, of course, they’re my favorite. Me and Daisy used to take us a blossom and hold it just so, and pretend it was a dolly, going to a dance. See here? This is her party dress. Why no, they’re easy, once they get a good start, just like anything else. Once you get something going, it takes on a life of its own, seems like. Looky here how tall they get! Taller than Billy, and Billy’s tall. He’s in the house, he don’t get out much anymore. You’re the first visitor I’ve had in — Lord, I don’t know how long! Of course I’ve got lots of company out here in the yard. You want to meet my people? Come on then. I’ll be glad to introduce you.

  Now this here is Mama, who loved flowers and songs and every pretty thing. Oh, I wish you could have seen her in life! She was the sweetest thing, she reminded me of a butterfly somehow. Yellow hair hanging down to her waist, and the littlest, whitest feet! She used to paint her toenails fire-engine red, and then she’d paint our little toenails red, too. She’d put cotton between our toes, to let our toenails dry, and then we’d dance and dance in the garden, Daisy and me and Iris Jean, and Mama would sing.