Chapter 19

Ethel got the show on the road after that. The next hour and a half had me and the other men stepping and fetching, but it was for a good cause. You should have seen Jaycee's eyes light up when she came back and got a look at the bedroom furniture she'd be using.

Carolyn and Geneva stayed with Jaycee to help her get situated while Ethel, Wanda, and the men went back to the house. I hoped that supper was high on Ethel's list of things to do next.

"Jaycee, can you ride a horse, I asked, before they could get out of pocket.

"Sure, I haven't in a while but before I left for the army I loved riding," she said.

"Good, do you mind if I pick one out for you?"

"For me, what do you mean?" she asked.

"I'm sure that George intends four you to have one down here in my barn. It'll be handier in case you need it. I thought I'd go pick one and bring it down," I said.

"That's fine. I'm going to be a little busy for a while," she said, and I left, mostly to make sure I didn't get busy in this type of thing myself.

I took my own pickup up to George's house, since Jaycee's things were still in the Hum-V pickup. It was the first time I'd been in my truck since the discovery of the contents of my new garage. It felt familiar and comforting. It made me realize that things hadn't been very familiar since before my poker trip to Shreveport. Or at least they hadn't been after I got back.

My whole world had changed, starting with a barn that Bob built, for the fun of it. Who builds a barn for fun? No one. But Bob had. But had he really done it for fun?

Looking back, things started getting pretty unbelievable from the time my depression started. The depression was unbelievable itself for that matter. My life had turned into the old salesman's joke:

Six munths ago I couldn't even spell salesman, now I is one!

Six months ago I couldn't even spell depression, actually I could spell it but it hadn't been a part of my life. Then it showed up in my head and things went to shit, but not really. They just seemed to be going to shit at the time. In the long run, depression was the key to my new situation. My new, unreal life.

Anyone looking at it from a distance would say I'd walked through a pasture of cow shit and only had to stoop down and pick up a big gold nugget every now and then. I wasn't looking at it from that distance though and just now, alone in my pickup for the first time in a few days, I was able to distance myself from the day-to-day things that had been happening.

Previously I wouldn't have called myself an introspective type person. Basically, I went through life reacting to whatever came next. Planning wasn't high on my to do list.

I came to George and Ethel's drive and went past it. The short pickup ride had let me get a look at what had been happening to me and around me and I wasn't ready for that look to go away. I hadn't seen enough yet.

That was a disturbing thought itself. What was it about my old pickup that let me think clearly, if that was what I was doing? Suddenly, almost as if it came from something besides my own head, I got the urge to blow this ride off and go back to George's house and go inside.

"Cut that out, Goddammit, whoever you are - whatever you are, stop it," I screamed aloud.

The urge went away at once, almost violently, if that's possible. That urge had been the They fog trying to creep back into my head and for the first time I'd actually felt it coming. Before now, I'd known that fog was around me at times but I'd never distinctly felt it coming before.

What do you know, I'd caught They at it, caught them fucking with my head. Suddenly I could remember all the times they'd done it before. Hell, I could even remember back to when my depression started in the first place.

They had caused every damned bit of it. Anger flooded through me at once and ebbed almost as quickly. There'd been something else during that flash of anger though, and I'd felt it too. Even better, I'd felt exactly where it'd come from and it hadn't come from me.

It wasn't exactly a door in my mind that They came through, but that's a good analogy, or as close as I can come to explaining the unexplainable. Best of all, I knew I could shut it. I did, in fact it was the mental equivalent of slamming a door.

The fog was gone, completely, and it was good.

I was alone in my own head for the first time in a long time, but I didn't have time to gloat. Just this second I had to drive, of all things.

Apparently, They had been taking care of that mundane little task while the door'd been open and when I'd slammed it in their faces the chore of driving fell back to me.

Thankfully I hadn't been in any traffic, and there was a wide shoulder here, so I pulled over and stopped.

It's hard to explain what the door was but I didn't have any trouble examining it myself. Maybe my brain was putting it into a context that I could understand; almost certainly it was, since I knew there wasn't an actual door inside my skull, no matter how small.

There was a door though, and I could visualize the tiny doorknob. I could even see the old-timey keyhole. What the hell, I bent mentally for a peek through it. No joy there, nothing to see, but I could feel something through that virtual keyhole. I could feel They, and They wanted me to open the door again.

This was the happiest moment in my life, so far, because I had gained something that I treasured. Control - I'd recovered control of my life.

I'm not saying that They had done anything to harm me, not in the least, but control over what goes on in your own mind is what being a human is all about - at least that's what it's about to me. I had hold of control again, and to tell the truth, I didn't want to open the door for They.

My own mind played traitor to me then. As if I didn't really have the control I'd just been slobbering about, a question came into being and was on the loose inside my head before I could stop it, and straight through the keyhole it went.

"What'll ya give me?"

That tiny slip started something that had never happened on earth before, or not to my knowledge anyway. It started a conversation between an earthling - as in me - and a non-earthling - as in They. It's a damned good thing that They could speak English, sorta.