Chapter 2

Without hesitation, I pulled my t-shirt and boxers off, then dove in. I could see fish swimming in the water. I learned to swim in this lake, and I’ve swam here many times since the day my mom and dad taught me to swim. I had no doubts or fears about swimming here now.

I went down maybe twenty feet with my eyes open and they weren’t burning. I saw the red object as it glowed and sent tiny bubbles to the surface from all sides. It looked really big ... I had to know more about it...

The closer I came, the more I felt as if I was being drawn to it.

I swam down another ten feet to stand on the lake bottom next to the object. It looks like a huge, round rock, maybe five feet across and just as tall. A perfect sphere, except for the identical, burned-out pockmarks on the outer surface. It closely resembles a giant, dull-red golf ball – chiseled to perfection.

I reached out and touched the rock tentatively. It was warm but not hot – yet it was glowing. It occurred to me that I was still holding my breath but I felt no need to breath. I waved my hands in front of my face, and for the first time – I saw an invisible shroud around me as the water parted ... I was inside an invisible bubble of some sort and the water was held back from me. It was the same shape as my body and no more than centimeters from my skin at any one point as I looked down. I took a short gulp of air, then another ... I could breath!

I swam all around the ball shaped object, touching – feeling the smoothly formed pockmarks, looking at the melted sand where it lay partially embedded in the lake bottom.

Something grabbed me from behind and I sucked my breath in so hard, I just knew I’d swallow half the damn lake! Savana swam in front of me and she too was naked.

Her eyes were as wide as mine. I pulled her close and watched as she became enveloped in the shroud.

We looked the red ball over again and again, touching it and running our hands over the surface of the big object.

“What is it, Boyd?” she spoke and I could hear her clearly.

“I’m not sure. It’s going take someone smarter than me to figure this out.”

I was amazed at our ability to talk and hear underwater. We were breathing, but our lungs weren’t filling with water.

I pointed up and we shot to the surface as if we had been jettisoned from twin torpedo tubes.

“Boyd, I feel so alive in this water – I was afraid at first, that you were in trouble down there and I had to come check on you. I’m glad I did now. That was really weird, talking and hearing underwater – even breathing.”

“I know. I was down there for the longest time, when it occurred to me that I felt no need to hold my breath. I saw that I was encased in some sort of invisible shroud and I could breathe and hear inside it. When you touched me, I jumped and thought surely I would swallow half the lake when I sucked my lungs full of air, but no water entered my lungs.”

“Boyd I know a professor at OSU who would love to be involved with something like this. He’s told us many times in class about chasing and tracking meteoroids across North America.”

“Good ... When we get back, try the cellphones. If they work, call him. I’ll need to clean the place up, cut the trees, push the house down and bury what’s left of it. It will completely fall to the ground with the first gust of wind anyway. I’ll try to get us a mobile home brought out today and we’ll make that our home until we can have another house built.”

We were treading water – Savana was next to me and she reached out to touch my chest.

“Make love to me Boyd. I feel so excited I can hardly wait.” Then she kissed me. She pressed herself to me as we tangled legs.

“I feel the same way ... get ready,” I told her as I pushed myself into her. There was no lovemaking, no preliminaries, just animal lust. I felt powerful as I thrust against her, shooting my seed into the recesses of her belly.

“Oh, I got another one when you filled me with your semen. This is unreal Boyd. We have to try this on dry land.”

We parted after a long, lingering kiss and swam to the lake shore. When we stood to walk out of the water, I noticed Savana’s skin. She looked different. As the water ran off – she was dry. I looked at my own body and I was dry. We were both darker than we were when we went into the water. A deeper golden color, rather than dark brown. She keeps her long hair braided, and mine too. Now hers looks even blacker than ever.

“Savana, do you feel different?”

“I sure do Boyd. I felt it in the water, but now I feel as if I’m so pent up with energy ... and so alive.”

“I feel the same way and look at Custer. He’s ripping and running up and down the water’s edge like never before,” I said as we watched the yellow Lab run and play.

I picked up a stick, showed it to him then threw it nearly fifty yards across the lake. I was shocked that I had thrown the stick so far. Custer took off, hitting the water’s surface close to thirty feet out from the shore. He was making a wake like a boat as he swam to the stick and swam back even faster.

“I don’t know what all of this means but we need to get started. We have a lot to do,” I told her as we walked up to the horses.

Before I could help her, Savana sprang to the horse’s back from the ground in an effortless swing of her long legs. We were still naked after we’d made love in the lake, as if we were animals in heat.

Kane and Abel were racing across the open pasture when we came to a tall, five-strand, barbed wire fence. They cleared it in full stride. I felt like I was a part of Abel as he ran full speed. I looked over at Savana and she too had a smile on her face. She loved this, it was like a feeling of power to her as well. The horses ran into what had once been our barnyard and stopped as if confused when they saw the smoking pile of rubble that had been the barn. We slid to the ground and walked naked to the house.

I took my cellphone from my truck seat and turned it on. It booted up with a full signal, which is odd out here. We never have over two bars, but always enough to make or receive a call, or text, as long as we’re outdoors.

I turned to hand Savana the cellphone. “Call your friend in Stillwater. Tell him to come prepared to stay a day or two. Tell him what happened but ask him not to let it out to anyone, especially the news media until we know more about this.”

I walked inside and took two more t-shirts from the chest. I pulled on a pair of boxers and got Savana a pair of bikini panties. I looked at them and threw them back in the drawer, smiling as I walked out to where she was talking animatedly to her professor friend. As soon as Savana was off the phone, she took the t-shirt and never even asked about her boxers or panties as she stretched the tight shirt over her proud breasts. Damn, I believe they’re bigger and more prominent than ever before.

“Professor Richards will be here within three hours. His daughter, Andrea has her doctorate and she’s coming with him. She’s two years older than me and assists him on all his field trips. Professor Richards was stricken with Polio years ago and his legs are crippled really bad. Andrea does most all the field work while he records the data.”

“Savanna, why don’t you take your debit card and go shopping for us some more clothes and groceries. I’m going to call a couple of mobile home sales offices and try to have a new mobile home brought out today, even if I have to bribe someone.”

“Boyd, can we make love again before I go? I feel so alive and so full of energy. When we made love in the lake, I felt like we were doing it for the first time again.”

“I felt the same way, almost as if I had gained some kind of wild animal energy after swimming in that lake water.

Savana told me that she was on the pill when she first moved in with me.

“Just in case one night or day you want to make me your woman,” she’d told me late one evening while we sat on the deck drinking a beer. When she first moved in, I bought her a new subcompact car that she had picked out, for her to drive back and forth to school. She stayed in Stillwater during the week and came back here on weekends. She decided on this arrangement herself.

“Boyd, I’ll be starting school in two weeks. I need you to do something for me,” she said as she stood and stripped naked on the deck.

“Are you sure about this, Savana? I want you to be sure about what you’re doing. I really care about you and I don’t want to ever lose you as a friend.”

“I need you, Boyd. I want to make love.”

We made love the first time right there on the wooden deck. I lay back and she took me into her tight, virginal body as she sat on my belly. If there was ever a girl who loved sex, it was Savana Llewellyn Creekmore. We made love another three times before morning and twice more the next day. We kept up the pace for most of the next two weeks. Then, the night before she started back to school, we slept on the deck, wrapped in quilts and each others arms. Again we made love the next morning. When she was showered, dressed and packed, she broke down and cried before she drove to OSU at Stillwater.

I bought her a cellphone and she called me every night. Her first weekend home I thought she would kill me with her sexy body. She was insatiable as she slammed herself into me over and over until we fell side by side and held each other as we slept.

“I want a baby, Boyd,” she told me, as we thrashed against each other.

“Then stop taking the pill now and let’s start a family.”

“Oh Boyd, I feel it coming. I wish we were getting a baby now – I want a baby so bad. DO ME NOW BOYD!”

I felt her pulling me deeper and tighter into her. I felt my own release building and as she pushed back, I pulled her hips to me tighter. We exploded against each other when our orgasms couldn’t be held back.

“Throw the pills away, I want at least two boys and two girls,” I told her as I held her.

I didn’t know what was happening here or what would become of us, but for some reason, both of us knew that now was the right time to start a family. We would soon realize just how many more changes had been made to our lives and our bodies in just a few short hours.

Before dark, I would experience one of the most incredibly amazing – unimaginable feats of my life...

... Of any man’s lifetime throughout the history of mankind on this earth

Over the course of the next few months, even more very extreme changes would become evident. Some of which were beyond my comprehension, even Dr. Andrea Richards and her father, Professor Adam Richards.

I called information for the mobile home sales office closest to us. My call to the first dealer was answered on the first ring and I told the man who I was and where I lived.

“I want the most expensive 16-wide mobile home you have on your lot. I’ll pay cash for it in full, if you can have it here and set up by sundown,” I told the owner.

“Sir, I would truly appreciate having your business, but there’s no way we can get it there. We already have two on the books to set up today.”

“I’ll pay each man in your set-up crew an extra thousand dollars, if they’ll get in the road right now. If you’ll come with them, I’ll count out your full amount in cash while they set it up.”

“We’re on our way,” he said and hung up.

I’ve heard it said that money talks and bullshit walks. Well, money talks even louder when it’s crisp and green.

I continued pushing with my dozer, and the framework of the dwelling just crumbled and fell to the ground. What had once been strong wooden 2X8s, 2X6s and 2X4s, were only splintered and dusty wooden scraps. The metal roofing was yet another oddity. When the roof collapsed to the ground, the roofing that once had been off-white, twenty-two gauge steel panels, now cracked and shattered like thin glass.

I had cleared the place near the meter pole, where the water and sewer lines were, to make it handy to park the mobile home. Then I buried what was left of the foundation and storm cellar, to clear a space big enough for our temporary home.

I saw the truck and mobile home coming up the dusty gravel road as I pushed the last of what had been our home out of the way. I waved the driver in through the front yard and lined him up with the utility pole, away from the water lines.

I had $49,500.00 cash in a tote bag, but I wasn’t sure just what I was paying for the new mobile home.

Mr. Dellicotte drove his Cadillac around to where I was standing. He’s a short fat man, wearing a white shirt, dark blue dress pants and red suspenders. He’s constantly wiping sweat from his face and bald head with his handkerchief.

“Mr. Lightfoot, I presume?” he said as he put his sweaty hand out to shake.

“Boyd Lightfoot, yes.” I shook hands with him, then dried the palm of my hand on my t-shirt.

“Denver Dellicotte here. I have the papers for your new home,” he said as he handed me the large brown manila envelope stuffed with papers.

“How much, Mr. Dellicotte? And remember, I’m paying cash so I expect the absolute lowest price. I may check you out later if I think I was overcharged.”

“I can assure you Mr. Lightfoot, this is the best deal you could have gotten in the state. Pay me $39,500.00 and we’ll call it clean. The papers will read $45,000.00.”

I opened the bag and counted out the $39,500.00. Taking the rest of the money out of the bag I handed him his part, bag and all. Mr. Dellicotte never counted the money. He shook hands with me again, then got into his car and left, smiling as he waved out his window. I knew he could hide most if not all of that cash, but that was his problem not mine. I watched as the setup crew used the hydraulic lift – mounted on tracks, to raise and maneuver the mobile home to the exact position I wanted, then lift it to remove the wheels and stack the cinder blocks in place to tie it down. They checked the level all four ways, using shims to get it exact.

I told them I wanted extra tie-down anchors and they added four to each side, well over industry standards. With cordless drills and screw guns, the crew very quickly had the underpinning up and sealed at all the seams and corners.

I looked the setup over from end to end – top to bottom. They had even connected the electricity, sewer and water line. I went inside and checked the water faucets, which, after a few sputtering and spitting spurts, ran clean and clear. I flushed the commodes and ran the showers. I turned on the lights, then the air conditioner.

I handed each of the seven men a thousand dollars in cash, then handed the foreman the remaining $3,000.00 to split with his men.

Savana called me from a go-phone she’d bought, and said she was buying groceries, that she would be at least another hour. She’d called Andrea Richards again, to make sure they were coming, and they were less than an hour away.

I finished smoothing off the area and parked my dozer back inside the metal shop. I was walking back toward the mobile home when I saw a conversion van coming up the gravel road, chased by a cloud of red dust. When they crossed the wooden bridge over the Canadian onto my property, they stopped next to me.

“Hello ... you have to be Boyd. Savana told me I would know you as soon as I saw you. I’m Andrea Richards and this is my dad, Professor Adam Richards,” Andrea introduced herself, then turned to point to her Dad.

I looked through her window to see Professor Richards in a handicap, Captains Chair in the back with his wheelchair folded and stowed to the side.

“I’m happy to meet both of you. I’m not sure how much Savana told you over the phone but we had a visitor during the night and it’s still resting quietly here on our property.”

“She told us it’s definitely a large meteorite, and it’s at the bottom of a lake near here,” Andrea said.