This is a
story written for a creative writing class. It happened after Don
Nelson and I were married in 1959 and then left
Transition
Rose Hall
“We must look for that cow skull that Rodney tells us is just 30 miles outside Albuquerque,” I say remembering my uncle’s parting witticism. Silently, we push into the dusk toward El Paso our new home. We see no other cars; we are alone.
The stars comfort us and the headlights create the funnel of light ahead of us. We drive for an hour.
Don alerts me, “Pay attention to those lights ahead!
Do they seem to come closer?”
Finally I reply, “Well, perhaps someone is having car trouble. Maybe we should slow down.”
We drive maybe another ten minutes before we make out a car stopped in the middle of the highway…lights blazing.
Don tenses! “It may be a hijacker; I have to pull off the highway and slow up because of the U-Haul.”
As we creep around the car, we hear a voice, “Oh, my God! Someone help me.”
Don rolls to a stop, turns to me and warns, “If anything happens, pull away from here and flag down the next thing coming this way.”
Don returns and demands, “Hand me the coffee thermos! This woman is unhinged. I don’t know what happened.”
Thrusting the thermos into Don’s hand and praying for lights of an oncoming car, I locate the bright light button in the floor of the car with my left foot.
No light ahead on the highway! I am aware of their voices over my left shoulder. Can this be a trap? Please, God, send someone!
There is a glimmer. Hope it’s not my imagination. No, it is a light! Time passes slowly before I think it’s close enough to start flashing the bright lights.
Flash! Flash! Flash! Thank God for Greyhound buses! It rolls to a stop and the driver meets Don halfway.
Suddenly, I am trembling.
Don comes to the window. Relieved, he says “The driver is taking her on board the bus; a regular customer is driving her car and they are taking her back to Albuquerque…. I need some of that coffee.”
On the way again, Don tells me this woman is a student. She is just completing her exams at the University and is on her way home to her parents. An airship coming out of the western sky hovers over her car. She accelerates her car; she tries and fails to lose the airship; she wheels back toward Albuquerque and protection. But, in terror, she collapses and stops where we find her.
We discuss it and think perhaps she has been on some drug, some hallucinogen, something to keep her awake while cramming for finals.
Once in El Paso and in the neighborhood of our new apartment, we find a restaurant and order an early breakfast before we sleep. We read the local newspaper while we wait.
On the front page there is a story of a scattering of people across the city who reported to police strange lights dancing across the city that do not seem to be from satellites or commercial aircraft. An official of the city’s police department mentions that all the people who report these unusual lights notice them while barbecuing out-of-doors, serving beer and mixed drinks.
Soon afterward we visit a couple downstairs in our apartment building. We tell our spaceship story. The husband, a radar technician at White Sands, informs us that they pick up flying objects on radar at speeds far beyond anything the United States military flies and it makes ninety degree turns at those speeds…impossible for even our most advanced jets.