Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed Read online

  Oh, the fear all around was almost a shape that Willie Bea could touch.

  Sweet Aunt Lu Wing was sniffling and crying a little, right before Willie Bea’s gaze. Her hair was pulled back in a ball, and strands of it had come loose in wisps around her face. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

  “Somebody move that stone piece offen the well,” she was saying softly to no one in particular. Covering her eyes with the handkerchief. “I’ve always been ready for Old Maker. I will jump down. Cold well water’ll take me fast. That’s the best way. Get it over quick, before they get here.”

  Willie Bea couldn’t believe what she had heard. Aunt Lu, ready to jump down the well! She followed as Aunt Lu wandered over to where Aunt Leah was fixing her make-up again over on the couch. Aunt Lu stood looking at Leah in her fine gown.

  “Oh, Leah. Leah! Come with me!” she said, wringing her hands. No one seemed to be listening but Willie Bea.

  Right on that, Gramp came in from the hallway. “Donald! Donald!” he called to Willie Bea’s Uncle Donald, still standing apart. “Jimmy’s outside, patterollin’ the house with his shotgun. Fool is gone see a rabbit move and blow a hole in his own foot. Martians, pshaw!” Gramp Wing looked half disgusted and a part uncertain, Willie Bea could tell. “Go get Jimmy,” Gramp went on. “Get that gun away from him, Donald.”

  Uncle Donald didn’t hesitate; he hurried out.

  Willie Bea heard herself saying, “Somebody better do somethin’ about Aunt Lu. Talkin’ about jumpin’ down the well herself.”

  Willie Bea’s oldest sister was there. Rebecca Esther Mills Knight. “Where?” she said to Willie Bea.

  “Huh?” said Willie Bea. It was as if her sister had appeared out of thin air. “Hey, Becky! Where are the twins? Why come yall didn’t come to supper?”

  “Hey, Willie Bea. Been too busy. Oooh, Willie Bea! You dressed up so nice!” Rebecca said.

  “Thank you,” said Willie Bea. She looked down at herself. She’d forgotten she was dressed up at all. “You should see Bay and Bay Sis. I dressed them up,” she said proudly.

  “Where?” asked Rebecca, looking all around.

  Then they saw Bay and Bay Sister on the other side of the room. Near the radio. Over there was Rebecca’s husband, who was Willie Bea’s brother-in-law, Riley Knight. Willie Bea’s mama was talking to Riley. He was now the one fiddling with Grand Wing’s radio console. He had pressed some men out of his way. He had his twin babies clinging to his neck. They were dressed like cowboys of the Wild West.

  “Becky, did you make them the costumes?” Willie Bea asked her sister.

  “Uh-huh,” Rebecca said. “Took me all last night and this morning.”

  “They look so cute,” Willie Bea said about the twins. The boys had on cowboy hats made of cardboard covered with red fabric. On their belts they had tiny cardboard guns painted black. Their papa had nicknamed the boys Trump and Trick, and that was what everybody called them. “Here, Trump. Hey, Trick,” like they were a couple of cute puppies. They were ten times awfully cute.

  “But where’s Aunt Lu?” asked Rebecca.

  “Say she’s gonna jump down the well, too,” Willie Bea said.

  “Mercy!” moaned Rebecca. “Who started all this?”

  “Don’t you believe it?” Willie Bea whispered, loud enough for her sister to hear.

  Wide-eyed, Rebecca looked all around, not at Willie Bea. She shook her head. “Don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t hear anything on the radio. Haven’t seen nothin’ outside. But the sky tonight does look dark and smoky, some.”

  Willie Bea smiled and nodded encouragingly.

  Then Riley was standing there in front of Willie Bea. The twins were bouncing in his arms. “Can’t get nothin’ on the radio,” he said. “Wouldn’t be able to hear nothin’ if I could get somethin’.

  “Hey, Willie Bea,” he said. He had to shout, almost. “You lookin’ real like a hobo.”

  “Hey, Riley,” she said. “Lemme hold Trump.”

  He looked proudly at his boys. “He too heavy for you, Willie Bea. Anyway, you might get him full of paint and powder.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Willie Bea said. She saw her mama over across the room, talking to a man and a woman. And her sister Rebecca, right beside her, was telling Riley about Aunt Lu.

  Through the din of voices and the static turned up so loud on the radio, Willie Bea recognized the woman standing next to her mother as Honey Clay and the man as Mr. North. Grand and Gramp Wing’s house had turned into a real social gathering.

  Willie Bea glanced at the kitchen. She thought she saw Little in there. If there had been a bunch of young’uns in the kitchen, she would have known there were treats in a big bowl in there. But she couldn’t hear or see any bunch of older kids, although they had to be around somewhere. Aunt Lu probably hadn’t remembered to bring her treats.

  Good, Willie Bea thought.

  Then she noticed that Aunt Leah was no longer sitting on the couch, glamorous. She was nowhere to be seen.

  Oh, Willie Bea thought, what must I do about it? She knew she should do something about the fact that Aunt Leah was nowhere to be seen. But there were too many sights and sounds. She couldn’t keep her mind fixed to any one thought.

  Mr. Hollis was standing up and another man who had been seated was standing with him. It was Willie Bea’s oldest brother, Jason Mills, Jr.

  Jason!

  A little girl about the age of Bay Brother clung to his hand. She had on a red nightgown and a red, pointed cap that had a bell at the end of it. Every time she looked around, the bell tinkled high and pretty.

  Willie Bea didn’t get a chance to go over and talk to Jason Jr. and the baby girl, who was Jasonia, named after her father. Willie Bea looked, but she didn’t see Jason Jr.’s wife, who was Marcia Fay. She suspected that Marcia Fay must’ve had some of her own relatives over for dinner this Sunday. Her family was the Ramsey family. That was why Jason Jr. and Marcia Fay and the baby hadn’t come for Grand’s fine supper.

  Right before her eyes, there was Toughy Clay staring, peering at her. Like he was the sudden shape of noise and autumn colors of orange and gold. A slight touch of black. Just all of a sudden, Toughy, right smack in front of her.

  “Where’d you come from?” Willie Bea cried.

  “I’m just here!” Toughy yelled back, happy as he could be to be somewhere, and a part of noise and action. He was dressed up like an ear of field corn with its pale, dry husk still clinging over the corn. A sheet, dyed orange and gold, wrapped around him and pulled high in a point behind his head. He had drawn on an old shirt to make corn kernels. The corn kernels were sketched down his shirt front, down his shoulders and arms, peeking out of the husk-sheet. His face was powdered a sickly gray, like some larva-borer in the corn.

  “You are a picture of an ear!” Willie Bea told him. His was a swell costume.

  “I like your hobo, too,” he said, and then, “Guess what?”

  “What?” she said.

  “They landed at the Kelly farm,” Toughy said.

  “I know that,” Willie Bea said. To hear Toughy say it made her cold and still inside. It was all true.

  “Well, you don’t know this,” he said. “I saw one. Gret big Martian man.”

  “You … what?” Willie Bea said, barely able to get the words out.

  Toughy nodded. Looked away. “It crunched down behind a tree. Hidin’, I guess. But it was bigger ’n any old tree. Its fire eyes were in its chest. That’s why it thought it was hidin’ behind the tree. ’Cause the tree just come up to its chest, where the eyes was.”

  “What were you doin’ over there?” Willie Bea managed.

  “Just trottin’ by,” Toughy said vaguely. “On my way home from town. Just swung over there, see what I could see. I knew they was there long before anyone else.”

  Willie Bea didn’t think to ask why Toughy had gone over there in the first place. “What were they doing?” she said, shivering.

  “N
othin’, they,” Toughy said. “I only saw this one Martian, just scrunched down near the Kelly place. Gret big, house-size. Silo-high. Thinkin’ about pullin’ down them Kelly columns, I expect. I’d had me a gun, I’da taken out one of them flamin’ eyes.”

  “Ohhh!” Willie Bea said, and sat down hard in a straight chair. She hadn’t known the chair was there. But she was glad it was. For her legs simply gave way under her.

  “Toughy, they’re not Martians,” she said. She was about to reveal the secret that the Martians were actually from Venus. But she didn’t get the chance.

  Uncle Donald came into the front room in a hurry. “Need some of you right now,” he said generally, louder than the radio. He waved his hand toward the kitchen. Grand Wing was cutting chocolate cake and there were tired little young’uns surrounding her.

  “What is it?” Mr. North said.

  Gramp had come in and was over by the radio now. He gazed at Uncle Donald the ways folks do when they are listening hard to a faraway sound. “If I got somethin’, I don’t know what it is,” he said to Uncle Donald. “Confounded static.”

  “Well, they got the top piece offen the well,” Uncle Donald said. He looked half angry and half fearful. “Jimmy did it. I couldn’t stop him. He and Leah wrastle that top stone piece right off with a wedge iron. My li’l sister Leah may be silly, but she is strong to boot.”

  Gramp stared, transfixed, at Uncle Donald. So did some others at the radio console.

  “Lu says she means to jump down the well,” Uncle Donald explained. “And Leah right behind her. And Jimmy fixin’ to shoot somethin’ just because he ain’t found nothin’ yet to shoot. He think he has to shoot, so he pointed the gun at me.”

  “Whyn’t you take it out of his hand, then?” It was Grand, standing in the doorway from the dining room. There was Aunt Mattie Belle leaning around her to see. Grand was speaking to Uncle Donald, a hand on each hip.

  “With what?” Uncle Donald said.

  With that, some of the men hurried out the front door and some went around Grand in the doorway, going the other direction. One or two tried to get out the front-room window on the side. It didn’t have a screen. But Grand quickly rolled a Sunday newspaper and smacked them good around their ears.

  “What you think this house is—a sideshow?” she demanded. “No Mars invasion. Yall invaded my clean house, shoot!”

  Willie Bea hurried to the kitchen just to see if there were treats other than Grand’s cake. Toughy Clay followed. No treats. Grand must have forgot.

  Good, she thought again.

  Willie Bea and Toughy slipped out the back door. Right at the rear of the house was the well. It was true—when they went around, the top piece of a well stone was clear to the side of the well. At the edge of the yawning black hole stood Aunt Lu and Aunt Leah. They had their arms around each other. They were peering, sort of, leaning slightly, looking over at the well hole. Aunt Lu was moaning and whimpering. Neither of the women was saying anything about jumping. Aunt Leah was quiet now, in her lovely gown and heels.

  Behind them, facing the gathering men, was Uncle Jimmy. He had his shotgun in both hands, held across his body.

  “What in the Sam Hell do you think you doin’?” asked Gramp Wing, coming up to Uncle Jimmy.

  “I’m a-guardin’,” Uncle Jimmy said, “that’s all.”

  “A-guardin’ what?” said Gramp. “And why the Sam Hell you take that cover off the well for?”

  “Well, Leah and Lu want to look. I want to see what’s maybe there, too,” Uncle Jimmy said. You couldn’t tell his expression, not enough light from the kitchen, but he sounded sheepish to Willie Bea.

  Then Grand was there with her rolled newspaper. “Listen here!” she said. She climbed up on Uncle Jimmy’s feet to get taller. “I’m not havin’ this foolishness.” She smacked Uncle Jimmy across his nose with the newspaper. It had to upset him, if it didn’t hurt him, too, Willie Bea thought.

  “Give me that gun!” Grand went on. She grabbed the gun out of Uncle Jimmy’s hand, cracked it open like she’d been doing that all her life, and took out the shells and let them fall on the ground.

  Quickly, Uncle Jimmy bent to retrieve them. Grand wasn’t standing on his feet then. She had backed up so she could have room to scold. “The idea!” she said. “I know where the star-gazin’ comes from, too.” She glanced at her daughter Leah. It was hard to tell if Aunt Leah was looking at her mother. “Don’t know why you always got to perform so,” Grand Wing continued. Back to Uncle Jimmy. “Don’t you say a word,” she told him. “Cover up that well right now. And not a word! Donald, you get over here and help. Riley Knight, Jason Jr., you get over here, too. Go take Leah and Lu inside. Get them somethin’, some cordials, down their throats, if they not got any better sense.”

  Grand glanced up at the sky. She leaned back and gave a long look. So did Willie Bea. It was smoky up there. Different and dark and smoky.

  Grand shook her head and went inside.

  “They never got to jump,” Toughy said, a shade disappointed, as Riley and Jason Jr. soothed the two aunts. Aunt Lu and Aunt Leah were silent, leaving the wellside. Willie Bea looked longingly a moment after Aunt Leah.

  “Have you seen Big and Little?” She turned back to Toughy, whispering.

  “Sure,” he whispered back. “They gone over Big’s with Hewitt,” he said peevishly. Willie Bea knew they had not allowed him to go with them.

  “Think I’ll go on over to Big’s,” Willie Bea said, loud enough for Jason Jr. to hear, going up the kitchen steps with Aunt Leah. Hearing her, Jason Jr. looked around, but he had no time for her now. He went on inside.

  There, she thought. If anybody wonders where we went to, he’ll remember I said over to Big’s. Well, Mama is too strict. Said me and the chaps not to leave over home. But Big and Little and Hewitt could leave. Nobody always watching them.

  “Did you happen to tell Big and Hewitt and Little about the Martian you saw?” Willie Bea asked Toughy. They watched as Uncle Jimmy and some men eased the well cover back on.

  Toughy looked sharply at Willie Bea. “What be wrong with that?”

  “Come on!” she whispered. While most were inside and those outside were busy with the well cover, she and Toughy slipped away.

  “Where we goin’?” Toughy wanted to know. They crossed the Dayton road and walked in shadows, dark shades of night among the trees around Willie Bea’s house. They skirted the light coming from the upstairs windows. There was just a low lamp light on downstairs, Willie Bea noted. They heard the front door open as they moved silently around the back.

  Papa! Willie Bea thought. And clutched Toughy’s arm to stop him. They crouched by the back porch, where Willie Bea had hidden in the morning. So long ago! she remembered. They heard her papa cross the Dayton road.

  “Now,” she whispered. They raced for the barn.

  Just inside the door there was a light bulb. Willie Bea pulled its chain, and a dim light came on. “Just a minute,” she whispered, “we’ll be out of here.”

  They could hear the hogs beyond the closed door. Willie Bea bent over and got the stilts. “Help me,” she called. Toughy Clay came slowly over. “You can use Bay Sister’s,” she told him. “They’re just as tall as mine. Thank goodness my little sister didn’t see me leave—that poor child.”

  “What you doin’, Willie Bea?” Toughy said.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “We can stride right on over to the Kelly farm on these!”

  “Oh, no,” he whispered, and hung his head.

  She looked at him. “You know the way. You have been there?” she asked him.

  He nodded, but he did not look up.

  “Then let’s go!” she said. “I’ve got to get there first!” She found a flashlight on her papa’s work table. “You carry it,” she told Toughy.

  “How’m I gone carry a flushlight and work them stilts, too?” he said. “And in these two sheets I got on?”

  “It’s a flashlight,” she said, “
and you carry it in your pocket.”

  “You carry it in your pocket,” he told her.

  “I don’t have any pockets. Now, come on!”

  “Wait, I got to do somethin’ with these sheets,” he said.

  “I can take one,” she told him.

  Toughy unwound the sheets. He had a wool shirt and the same corduroy knickers on beneath. He had on men’s long stockings below the knickers. Toughy gave one sheet to Willie Bea. He tied his like a cape around his neck, letting it hang down in folds from his shoulders. Willie Bea did the same.

  “Superman!” he said, without much conviction. The cape would keep him warm. Toughy wouldn’t think of refusing Willie Bea. After all, she was inviting him with her, and most of the time he seemed to get on her nerves. Couldn’t find her all day, too. He’d have to ask her sometime where she’d hid. And it was his own fault he had talked about the Kelly farm. He had no one to blame but himself for that kind of lie. It had just slipped out—a Martian man!

  Resignedly, he followed her over to the porch, where they could get on their stilts. They used the thick rubber circles out of Mason canning jars to hold their feet in place on the wedge footrests. Toughy helped Willie Bea first. Then, when she was on her stilts, she steadied his stilts while he fixed his feet on his wedges.

  “You go first,” Willie Bea told him when they were ready. “You got the light, and you know the way.”

  “All right, Willie Bea,” he said softly. There was no point in arguing. He did know the way over there, no lie. And moving, scared, was probably a whole lot better than standing still, scared to death.

  “Hope we don’t run into nothin’,” he said under his breath.

  “Hope the Venus man is still there,” Willie Bea whispered to herself. “Oh, just don’t let him leave all of a sudden. Don’t let Little see him. Oh, let a Gobble-un get her.”

  Watch out, Little, here comes the Venus Star!

  10

  They strode the dark world, stilting. Willie Bea and Toughy Clay were out in the countryside. They were along roads, and through the fields whenever it was possible for them to get over fences.