“Unless you mean to make a fool and liar of Edie, the sweetest woman this side of forever,” said Mrs. Bullock, “then you best hie yourself up to your room and quick fetch that pistol.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As I turned to leave, she said, “And not just the gun, but them spare magazines come with it.”
“Be right back,” I assured her.
Two minutes later, when I returned with the Glock and the extra magazines, the back door opened, and Mr. Bullock stepped into the kitchen, carrying a shotgun. He saw my weapon and smiled broadly.
“Good to see you put your silly don’t-like-’em behind you and come down packin’ the way you should.”
His wife said, “He come down defenseless as a fawn, so I sent him up to get himself right.”
Mr. Bullock’s smile faded to a look of disappointment. “This here’s a war we’re in, young fella, even if it’s so secret most folks don’t never have a clue about it.”
“Yes, sir. I know. I’m sorry. I won’t forget the rules again. Where should I put it?”
Mrs. Bullock indicated the pistols beside two of the plates on the table. “Quick to hand is best.”
As I put the Glock and spare magazines beside the third plate, I said, “Something sure smells good.”
She said, “My grandma’s best-ever meatloaf in cilantro-tomato gravy, with just a tetch of inspired fiddlin’ by yours truly, plus all the trimmin’s.” To her husband, she said, “Seein’ as you’re alive, must’ve been a false alarm like you thought.”
“Dang coyote,” he said as he went to a broom closet tucked into a corner of the kitchen cabinetry. “Slinkin’ around, maybe hopin’ for one of the chickens we don’t even raise, set off a motion detector.”
Indicating the sunlight at the windows, she said, “Early for one of their kind bein’ on the hunt.”
Instead of brooms, the broom closet contained a gun rack with another shotgun. Mr. Bullock racked his 12-gauge beside the first weapon and hung his hat on a peg in there.
“It was a bonier specimen than usual, maybe too hungry to wait out the sun.”
He washed his hands as his wife served dinner family style: the meatloaf on a platter, half of it sliced; butter-rich mashed potatoes mounded in a bowl; different vegetables in each of four other serving dishes; two gravy boats to ensure no waiting; a basket of pull-apart rolls.
When we were seated, Mr. Bullock said a brief grace, and Mrs. Bullock said, “Amen,” and we ate like longshoremen who’d just worked grueling overtime on the docks. Everything was delicious.
Watching me eat, Mr. Bullock said, “Maybelle, this here young fella seems to think your cookin’s more out of this world than our astronaut did.”
“Everything’s delicious, ma’am, it’s perfect.”
“High praise comin’ from such a renowned fry cook. I’m flattered.”
I said, “Why did the astronaut need a new identity?”
They glanced at each other, and she raised her eyebrows, and he shrugged, and she said, “Edie adores him, Deke. She don’t mistake a demon for a saint. And you know what he done … back then, the mall.”
To me, Deke Bullock said, “The astronaut fella seen somethin’ up there, he couldn’t for the life of him keep shut up about.”
“Up there?” I asked.
Mrs. Bullock pointed at the ceiling. “Space.”
Her husband said, “He was up there doin’ science or somethin’ on the space station awhile. The thing happened, and the astronaut was told he never seen what he knew dang well he’d seen.”
Mrs. Bullock said, “So when he gets back, he goes and tells some people he thinks they should know the truth, but they’re the wrong ones to tell. Next thing, they’re all chasin’ him.”
“Who?”
“CIA,” Mr. Bullock said.
Mrs. Bullock said, “FBI, too.”
“IRS,” Mr. Bullock added.
“Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
“Social Security Administration.”
“Library of Congress and heaven only knows who else,” Mrs. Bullock said.
I considered all of that for a moment, and then I asked, “How did he find his way to you?”
“Never did,” Mr. Bullock said. “Edie Fischer found him how she finds so many. She took him someplace for a new face, then brung him here, so we could paper him up with a new name.”
I took a second slice of meatloaf. “What did he see up there?”
Neither of them replied.
“I mean, up there in space,” I said. “What did he see up there in space?”
Mrs. Bullock had gone pale. “Better we don’t say.”
“Not a bit of good can come of sayin’,” her husband agreed.
“It’s not we don’t trust you, Oddie,” she assured me.
Mr. Bullock looked grim. “It’s just you don’t never want it in your head. I mean, the thing that happened up there.”
“Once it’s in your head, there’s no gettin’ it out, what the astronaut described.” Mrs. Bullock shuddered. “Them images,” she said in a tone of voice in which she might have said, Oh, the horror.
“Them images,” Mr. Bullock agreed, having gone whiter than the mashed potatoes.
Mrs. Bullock said, “Them images keep comin’ back on you when you least expect, and your blood runs ice-cold.”
“Ice-cold,” her husband agreed, and nodded solemnly.
The woman nodded solemnly, too.
The three of us sat there nodding until Mr. Bullock suddenly turned his head to look at the window above the sink, as if he’d heard something that unsettled him.
Maybelle’s right hand went to the pistol beside her plate, and she turned in her chair to look at the same window. “Deke?”
“Probably nothing,” he said.
I was facing the window that interested them. I didn’t see anything alarming. I didn’t hear anything, either.
After they had been staring at the window for the better part of a minute, Mr. Bullock said, “I’m just jumpy.”