The Garage
“Billy, did you find it?” Mike
asked, waiting under the car. Billy, his fifteen-year-old brother, enjoyed
getting lost in the tools, lingering over washers and brackets, pieces he might
add to a new work of “art”. He wasn’t much help around the garage.
But it was summer and he’d promised
to keep Billy busy from ten until four o’clock during the week while their
parents worked. Billy spent more time studying his surrounding than actually
participating in them. “Did you find the torque wrench?”
Billy’s green-laced doc martins stayed
planted next to Mustang, suspended two feet above him and he stuck his arm out,
waiting for the wrench to fall into his hand. “Any time now.”
It landed in his hand. “Thank you.”
Then Billy walked away. A kid of few
words, unless it was a subject he obsessed over, like Wars and Spirits, a video game, which he had to be peeled away or spend his life eating intravenously from his position at the console. He’d
talk about Magic cards and things Mike didn’t really understand.
Mike was more than a decade older, a
surprise baby, just when his parents thought their Golden Years were ahead.
He shook his head. At least Billy could
bring him the tools he needed while he was under the car.
Banging metal sounds as though hubcaps
were falling all over the place rattled the garage.
He slid out from under the car. Wiped
the grease off his hands onto the bandana, then made his way in the direction
of the noise. “You OK, buddy?” he called to his little brother.
Several hubcaps circled the floor.
Billy wasn’t there. Probably scared off thinking he was in trouble.
It wasn’t as if he got in terrible
trouble, but Billy couldn’t take the tamest scolding and usually retreated when
the hint of a confrontation arose. Mike knew how to tread lightly.
“It’s all right, Billy, nothing’s broken! No
harm no foul.” He laughed using the same expression his father would.
“Where are you?” Mike searched around.
Not seeing his brother, he began picking up the hubcaps and stacking them
against the wall, then checked his watch. “Looks like lunchtime!” That was sure
to get Billy out of his hiding place.
“I’m ordering a pizza unless you want
to go for a drive?”
No answer. Mike checked the restroom. Billy wasn’t there.
“Well, I’m starving,” Mike said and went to the phone against the wall and dialed
the number for pizza delivery.
Billy ran passed.
“Hey, wait. You want pepperoni?” Mike
called to him.
Billy stopped, turned to Mike and shook
his head vehemently then continued on his way with a determined expression.
Mike rolled his eyes; it was going to be a long day.
-->
Once
Billy got spooked it could take hours for him to return to pre-spooked Billy.
That Mike could handle. Scared Billy was unpredictable. “I’m ordering the
usual, “ he said. “You’ll eat it eventually.”
Mike organized a few items in the office
while waiting for the pizza delivery. Billy came into the room, his eyes
skimming the items laid out on the desk. A collection of discarded items from
the garage and junk from the dumpster.
“Whacha looking for?” Mike asked.
“Ah, not sure.” Billy opened the desk
drawer. “Just need—here!” He pulled out a coil of copper wire.
Mike gave him the eye. He didn’t mind
if his brother busied himself with another project. At least, maybe he’d get
some work done with Billy entertained.
The pizza had arrived, but Billy
wouldn’t respond to his calls. If he wasn’t hungry, he would be, eventually.
Mike finished his lunch, drank water from the cooler, and then got back to
fixing the Mustang.
Billy’s Doc Martins pass by, again
and again, carrying rattling and clamoring things along with him, and now dragged
a long metal pipe. What’s he up to? “Are you building a spaceship?” Mike
laughed.
Billy returned for more items. Such determination
would warrant a masterpiece. He had to be sure and let Billy know that. Any
time he could boost his brother’s confidence he’d done his job.
Mike finished correcting the alignment
of the wheels and scooted out.
Cold pizza sat on the desk in the
office. He shook his head and went through to the garage to find his brother.
“Hey, Van Gogh, you aren’t even eating? Must be some work of art you’ve got out
back.” Mike trudged to the exit door and opened it.
Materializing before his eyes, a disk
of light lifted a few feet above the ground. With the sun’s reflection, it was
hard to determine the outline. Below the spinning orb, a mound festooned with
assorted metal links, wrenches, hammers, and bolts held together with twisted
copper wires pointed into the shape of a pyramid.
The orb expanded and retracted. Mike turned
to his brother, staring at the disk, eyes wide, trance-like, and the orb zipped
away.
“What was that?”
“They came when I made it,” Billy said.
“They said the pyramid’s a phone.
“A telephone?”
“Yeah, I communicate with
their star beings somehow with the pyramid.”
“Really?”
Billy leaned closer and shouted up
into the wires coiled into the shape of a cone, “My brother doesn’t believe
me.”
The orb returned. Out of nowhere. And waited at the point of the pyramid.
More arrived. And more still. Until
the clear sky became covered in white pulsating orbs.
“Now what?” Mike asked.
“I called that one here," Billy said. “They can’t all come unless we build more communication systems, the way they
used to visit.”
Mike looked away from his brother and
watched the disk fade in and out of visibility.
The End
"LISTEN TO THE SCIENTISTS!" ~ Greta Thunberg.
