Flash Fiction: Why Not Omaha?
According to Sheriff Lazar, there was nothing strange in the desert the night twenty-five people claimed to have seen a UFO. The Porters were having their five-year family reunion bash in Brawley, California. Once the destination of rodeo cowboys and Mexican labor, cattlemen and hay-farmers, the town flourished in the 1920’s. A hundred years later, the town was moribund, but the midway point for the Porter tribe that continued to grow exponentially.
“Get on out there and talk to these Porter people, Andy,” San Diego Times Editor Eliot Garcia told his cub reporter. “And remember, our readers don’t dismiss Jesus being an alien being.”
But Andy, graduating cum laude, figured he better get some level-headed lines from the law enforcement. “Do you think it’s true the Porters had a close encounter, Sheriff?” Andy asked as they sat in Ethel’s Café.
“Well, lots of inexplicable stuff goes on out in the desert. And they were ten miles outside the city limits, so we might not have seen a thing that late at night. Yeah, I think they saw something weird. There’s questions that ain’t been answered. Maybe they cain’t.”
“That’s an understatement,” Fanny Lipscombe told him when the Sheriff left. She’d gathered up her coffee cup and cigarettes and slid into the chair across from Andy. “People have disappeared out near Glamis. Nay-sayers say that the young couple that vanished last November eloped. I don’t believe it ‘course. I know Holly Thatcher and Zeke Beal. They’re Christian kids.”
“Don’t Christians elope?” Andy asked.
“Devout Cattle Call Rodeo fans don’t. Those kids wore that stripe.”
Earl Lipscombe, however, doubted his wife’s rendition. “They run off alright. I ain’t sayin’ they got hitched, mind you. I figure they’re shacked up in Omaha.”
“Why Omaha?” Andy said.
“Why not?”
The clue was just a random name. Earl could have said Tallahassee. Back at the Times, Editor Garcia made the same observation. “What did your gut tell you, Andy? Was Lipscombe hiding something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s mixed up with the spacemen,” Andy said.
“You better make sure. It’s all about fact checking in the newspaper game.”
This time Andy made an appointment with the Porter’s daughter, Selena, a CNA student at the Imperial Valley Community College. She was also single, eighteen and pretty. They met at Ethel’s after the breakfast crowd left.
“What did you see, personally?” Andy asked and wondered if her eyes could get any bluer. “Do you wear contacts?”
She was sucking a strawberry shake through a straw. “Nope. I’ve got 20-20. And what I saw was a floating chandelier land not more than fifty yards from my Daddy’s Winebago door. I couldn’t not see it, and it was making enough noise to wake Barbara Worth’s ghost. Vroom-vroom-like!
That settled it for Andy. “Will you marry me, Selena?”
“We’ve just met,” she said.
“I know, and I’ll never be happy unless you say yes to the mess, which is me without you.”
“Has the sun baked your brains?”
It was possible in 103 degree weather, but irrelevant when it came to love. “I have an overwhelming urge to run off, marry you, and have 2.5 children.”
“Nestor predicted I’d be married within the month. I suppose I should accept you.”
“Who’s Nestor?
Selena took a long sip that turned into a slurp. “The alien in the chandelier. We talked while his crew worked on a broken axel. Only they didn’t call it that.” Her eyes fixed on a faraway horizon. “We’ll always have the desert. Anyway, he said what I needed was an overhaul, and when I woke up, I was fifty pounds lighter, and had blue eyes.”
“You talked to an alien?”
“I didn’t want to be rude. It was a Star-Trek mind-meld like on TV. I was transfigured, just like Jesus. Makes you wonder who borrowed from whom, doesn’t it? My grammar’s better too. Our kids won’t be stupid.”
No, but they’ll probably be crazy and chubby. Selena was the girl for him. He was sure.
Eliot Garcia drove to the desert immediately after his conversation with Sheriff Lazar. The Lazy Cactus Motel reported that Andy Donovan was being charged an extra day because he didn’t check out, and when they checked the room, the bed hadn’t been slept in. “Thought I’d better explain the extra charge on the paper’s credit card,” Lazar said.
“I need to talk to Earl Lipscombe,” Garcia said.
“Dangest thing, Lipscombe and his missus are missing too, along with the Porter girl. I’m guessing those aliens were real and might have an appetite for abduction. It’s getting’ out of hand. I hate to think maybe all these years ET meant eat tourists.”
Garcia spent months and money investigating the strange occurrences in the California desert. He even sent a P.I. to investigate, just in case he missed something. But Donovan et. al. had vanished. For their part, the Porter family seemed oddly unconcerned about their missing daughter. “We’ll see Selena and her young man in a few years. Come reunion time, they’ll be here.”
Not if Andy was dead, often a result of disappearance. But Garcia couldn’t verify or deny without evidence. There were so many questions like that floating in vacant space. Mysterious. Open-ended. Perplexing him more and more as he headed up the mountain towards Jamul, along with a deep sadness that descended upon him like desert rain. Aliens may not realize that humans have big hearts and long memories. Andy was a friend, hopefully alive and hiding out in Omaha awaiting the Porter family reunion.
But why Omaha? That was a question that threatened to haunt him. He’d never been out of California. Inexplicably, he topped off his tank, turned around, and drove north east towards Nebraska. Maybe Andy had caught wanderlust from the mechanic named Jesus who told Garcia he helped fix an odd-looking vehicle in Glamis during rodeo days a few years back.
“You look like a searcher of truth, too” Jesus had said. “And a seeker of souls.”