“California. Never seen the Pacific, and I thought I’d get out of Texas for a while.”
“Don’t hear that from many Texans.” The officer smiled and removed his shades.
Ross Ed relaxed and allowed himself to smile back. “I admit it ain’t common.” Now that it was clear he wasn’t going to be fined, he was willing to be generous with casual pleasantries.
“Never seen the ocean myself.” The cop nodded toward the western horizon. “Never been to California, either. Hell, I still have to make it to Arizona. I hear Tucson’s pretty. I guess you’ll be going through there.”
“Don’t know. I’m kind of taking it easy and enjoying the ride.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Most people come up I-10, not through the mountains. It’s nice up there this time of year.”
“Sure is.” Ross Ed waited patiently.
The patrolman was reluctant to leave. “You sure you haven’t had more than a few beers?” Ross nodded reassuringly. “Okay. Just no more wheel-walking the center line.” He grinned. “lf you’d said one beer I would’ve known you were lying and might’ve had to haul you in.”
“I’ll be careful, Officer. I was trying to think and sing at the same time.”
The cop pushed back his cap. “I’m sure not going to spoil the day for a man who’s feeling good enough to sing. Don’t have too many days like that myself. You take care now, son.” As he started to turn and leave he caught sight of something that made him pause.
“Now what the blue blazes you got there?” He bent to squint past the Caddy’s driver.
Ross Ed thought fast. How much imagination did the patrolman possess? His mom and dad had brought him up not to lie to the police, but in the oil fields and honky-tonks he’d been introduced to conflicting opinions on the matter. His thoughts milled about and collided furiously with one another, like a major accident he’d barely escaped one time on the outskirts of Houston.
The longer he hesitated, the edgier and more alert the cop grew. He had to say something, anything.
“It’s a dead alien,” he heard himself blurting out.
“Is that a fact? Funny, it doesn’t look Mexican to me.” The patrolman roared. After a moment Ross Ed joined in, though he was wincing inside. He had plenty of Hispanic friends back home and the crude joke didn’t set well, though he knew this wasn’t the time or place to make an issue of it.
“‘A dead alien.’” The cop made a face. “I know, I know; you mean like one of those bug-eyed critters from Star Trek or Star Wars or one of those other Star movies. An E.T.”
“That’s right.” Having shown his hand, Ross Ed figured he might as well play it. “His name’s Jed.”
“‘Jed,’ oh yeah, right.” This time the patrolman laughed so hard he had to wipe tears from one eye. “Okay, Ross Ed Hager, what’re you doing with a dead alien?”
Ross considered briefly, then shrugged. “I reckon I’m taking him to California with me.”
“Right, right, I can see that.” The cop checked his watch. “California’d be the proper place for one, that’s for sure. Where’d you meet up with him?”
“Found him in a cave.” Ross purposely neglected to identify the location lest it stir latent proprietary impulses within this jolly enforcer of the law. “Figured he might want to see the ocean, too.”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t?” The patrolman manufactured a mock frown. “You sure you haven’t escaped from somewhere, Ross Ed?”
“As a matter of fact, Officer, I have. You know Abilene? I’ve escaped from there.”
The cop grunted understandingly. “I’ve seen pictures. Mesquite and hills. Don’t care much for it myself. Give me the desert any day. At least it knows what kind of country it wants to be.” He leaned in slightly. “Can I touch it?”
“Why not?” Ross swallowed. Denial risked piquing the officer’s suspicions. “He’s dead.”
He lowered the passenger-side window as the patrolman walked around to the other side of the car. Without a word the man reached in to feel first of the faceplate, then the suit. Ross tensed. As it turned out, needlessly.
The officer withdrew his hand. “Not a very good job. My sister could do better with papier-mâché. Some kids make it up for you, or did you buy it in a store? No. wait, you said you found it in a cave.” He chuckled. “Probably stored there till the next Halloween. I can see a bunch of kids doing something like that. Scaring the shit out of their friends and then concealing the evidence. What’re you going to do with it?”
“Haven’t decided. Got to get to California first.”
“That’s right, you do. Well, you won’t get there sitting around here.” He stepped back and Ross Ed gratefully raised the passenger-side window.
“You take it easy now,” the cop called out from behind the car. “You’ve still got a lot of road ahead of you. And when you get to California, whistle at a couple of those beach babes for me, will you?”
“I’ll do that.” Ross stuck an arm out of the open window and waved.
As the big Caddy started up and pulled back out onto the blacktop, the patrolman walked back to his bike, shaking his head. The weirdos you meet on the road, he mused. The guy was clean and polite. So he’d had a few beers? In his time the cop had downed a few himself, with no cataclysmic consequences. It wasn’t like the driver had been throwing down vodka shots.
He climbed back on his bike with the intention of turning around and making a check of the east side. As he keyed the ignition and rolled the accelerator, the Kawasaki took off like a cat with a terrier locked on its tail.
Ross Ed estimated the patrolman was doing no less than a hundred and fifty and accelerating rapidly when he went rocketing past. It was hard to tell because he hadn’t seen the bike coming up on him. It vanished over a low rise like dissipating heatstroke.
A mile down the road he slowed only long enough to make sure the cop was all right. His uniform in tatters, he was bending over the exhausted motorcycle, which lay on its side in the soft sand behind the shoulder. Smoke rose from the front and rear wheels, which sheer speed had reduced to globules of metal and rubber slag. As he surveyed the scene in his rearview Ross found himself wondering how fast the bike had been going when the wheels had finally melted and the cop’s uniform had shredded. He glanced to his right.
Jed the dead sat stolidly in the passenger’s seat, head facing forward, blankly eyeing the road ahead. Apparently, making contact with the alien, or the alien’s suit, resulted in repercussions as unpredictable as they were astonishing. Ross Ed had received an hour-long tour of the known cosmos. The unsuspecting patrolman had been granted the ability to accelerate to speeds with which the physical structure of his vehicle was ultimately unable to cope.
Leaning over, Ross cautiously stroked an alien arm. Nothing happened. There was no reprise of the astronomical tour he had received in the cave. Perhaps the extraordinary happenstances were one-shots, delivered only upon making initial contact.
Another look in the rearview showed no sign of the dazed patrolman. Ross Ed doubted the man would draw any connection between the “fake” dead alien and the fact that his bike had inexplicably gone berserk. How he was going to explain to his colleagues that his motorcycle had been traveling three or four hundred miles an hour before it died was something Ross didn’t have to worry about. No one would believe him anyway. Probably they’d think he’d set fire to his own vehicle. In that context the mention of a dead alien traveling cross-country in a white Cadillac in the company of a Texas roughneck would not be likely to endear him to his superiors.
He’d have to be careful, Ross reflected, not to let passersby make casual contact with his companion.
“You may be dead,” he informed his passenger, “but danged if you ain’t full of surprises. What other tricks can you do?”
