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The next morning when she woke, the
first thing she thought of was that she should check her e-mail. There
were fourteen messages in her mailbox. All said the same thing. “Urgent!
Urgent! Did you touch Henry when he was unconscious? Urgent! Please reply.
Oscar.” Of course she touched him. She sewed him up, cleaned and
bandaged him. He was the one who didn't want to go to the hospital. If
he wanted her to incriminate herself by admitting this, he was out of
luck. She e-mailed him back:
“Henry who? There is nobody here by
that name.”
Ten minutes later the phone
rang. It was Oscar or said it was Oscar. Probably Henry playing more sick
tricks. “Did you touch Henry? Did you touch Henry? It is extremely
important that you tell me if you touched Henry with your bare hands at
any time.” No, she hadn't touched him with her bare skin, actually.
She wasn't unaware of the possibility of infection when dealing with open
wounds. She had worn latex gloves when she brought him out of the woods
and she had put on clean ones before she sewed him up. But she did not
answer. She hung up the phone.
It rang. She took it off the hook.
When she put it back on again an hour later, it rang immediately. Exasperated,
she picked it up. Before she could even say hello, she heard the same
question. When there was a pause she answered. “No, I did not touch
Henry. If you know where he is, I would appreciate it if you would tell
me. But I want you to know that I know positively that you are human,
not some... whatever you claim to be.”
There was a very long pause. She waited,
feeling pleased with herself in spite of the mess she was in. Finally
‘Oscar’ or whoever it really was, said, “How do you know
that?”
She told him how she knew that. Another
long silence followed. She heard a truck coming up her driveway. “Hold
on, there's someone coming up my road.” She looked out the window.
“Oh, it's the UPS man. Oscar? Are you there? Do you know where Henry
is? He needs to go to the hospital.” She heard the UPS man banging
around in his truck and then the thump of packages on the porch.
Oscar seemed to have lost all coherency.
“You, you, you....they, they, you,
you, Henry...”mixed with hissing sounds like someone whispering.
She hung up and when the phone rang
she took it off the hook. The delivery truck was disappearing down the
driveway as she opened the front door. Three large square boxes, each
labeled ‘Panasonic Nineteen Inch Color Television’ were on the
side of the porch in a row. They had red and white UPS Next Day Air stickers
and her address on top.
Just then, all the dogs started barking.
It was an ‘I-am-looking-right-at-you’ bark not an ‘I-hear-a-sound’
bark. Thinking it might be Henry, she ran to see, but the dogs stopped
barking before she got to the building. She looked around back. She saw
nothing, but the dogs were all staring intently into the woods. Returning
across the yard, she was surprised to notice that the back of each of
the three boxes had a large hole in it. That side of the boxes was not
visible from inside the house. When she looked inside them, all that was
there was a lot of food wrappers.
 oing back inside,
she put the phone back on the hook and waited. It didn't ring. She dialed
star sixty-nine. The line was busy. She hung up and the phone rang. She
snatched it up.
“Hello, Edna, how are you doing?”
It was her mother.
“Just lovely, Mom. I'm being attacked
by an alien species and my life is in danger. Do you mind if I call you
back later?”
“Fine, fine. You don't have to be so
unpleasant. I just wanted to see how you are doing.”
Edna hung up and stared at the silent
telephone for fifteen minutes. Where were all these strange things coming
from? What was going on? The DNA was human. Therefore all the things Henry
had said were lies. Therefore she was dealing with crazy but probably
harmless people. Three new, shy, little people lurking in her woods, and
one very sick Henry hiding somewhere. Maybe the new arrivals were friends
of Henry, come to take him away.
Shaking her head, she went out. She
wanted to talk to Oscar but she had to try and find Henry. If she couldn't
find him this morning, she would have to call the Sheriff's department.
What in the world would she tell them?
It was an overcast day but very humid
and still. The gnats were terrible. With the dogs, she walked a zigzag
route along the perimeter of the woods all the way around the meadow.
She kept the dogs close by so she could see if they found anything. The
forest seemed empty and lifeless. In the heat, no birds were singing and
the skies were empty. She plowed through thorns and thickets. Her boots
were soaked with dew, and the grass seeds and burrs covered her jeans.
In the dull light, the land looked messy and ugly.
When at last she gave up, Edna was
exhausted and intensely discouraged. She had to face the prospect of dealing
with the authorities. She looked at the boxes on the porch and groaned.
cont. on page twelve
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