water and carried it back into the living room and knelt down and cleaned up the mess. He did a good job; he was careful about it. When he was done he took everything back into the kitchen and rinsed it all out, and then he put a little clean water in the bucket and turned around and looked at me.
“Welly, I’d like to—may I visit your guests? May I see them?”
What the hell. He knew too much already; I wasn’t going to get anywhere by trying to keep it from him. And I was starting to be curious about what he’d think of them, frankly. And I guess I wanted him to see that I wasn’t just killing them. He’d struck a nerve there I didn’t even know I had.
I looked at my watch. We had twenty-five minutes before the others went gravy, max, if they hadn’t already. I didn’t know what had gotten into the one who ran into the living room. Maybe it was crazy or extra sick, or maybe the cucumbers were about to start pulling new tricks on me, in which case I couldn’t count on anything. “I don’t know if the others are still alive,” I said. “They may have gone gr—they may have died while we were out here. When they sing like that, it means they’re going to die pretty soon. So they may look like that other one, now. I’m just warning you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I think I’ll be fine now.” So I took him into the den. It was way too hot in there, with the space heaters, but that’s how the cucumbers like it. I still had the gun with me, just in case Humphreys tried to pull something. The other two cucumbers were still solid. I’d never taken a gun into the den before and I was a little worried about how they’d respond, if they’d start shaking again, but they didn’t even seem to notice.
Jim Humphreys had a plan, you could tell. He didn’t pay attention to anything in that room except those two solid cucumbers. He got down on his knees right away and started muttering and waving his hands over the water in the bucket. Then he dipped his hand in the water and used it to make a sign of the cross on each cucumber— which was awfully brave, really, since it had taken me months to be comfortable touching them, but I guess he’d seen that I was okay after picking that other one up—and mumbled some more. “Look at you,” I said. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted. “You talk about welcoming all strangers as Christ and here you are trying to do an exorcism—”
He looked up at me, looking shocked. “Oh, no!” Then he looked a little sheepish. “Emergency baptisms. Although it’s somewhat the same thing.” He rocked back on his heels and stood up and said, “Now what?”
I shrugged. “Now nothing. Now they have”—I checked my watch—”maybe fifteen minutes left.”
He looked at his watch, too. “May I wait here with them? Would that be all right?”
“I don’t see why not,” I said. He nodded and sat down on the floor, and I sat on the polka-dot beanbag chair. “All right, Reverend. You tell me this. If all strangers are Christ already, why do they have to be baptized?”
Humphreys smiled. “You should be a theologian. That’s a good question. Mainly because it’s what I know how to do, and it makes me feel better.”
“Huh! You think it’ll do them any good?”
“I have no idea. I don’t see how it can hurt them.” He looked around the room, then, up at the walls, and raised his eyebrows. “Matisse?”
“They like Matisse. Or I think they do. Don’t ask me, Reverend. I don’t know a damn thing. I do this and I do that, and I find chairs I think they like, and I say they’re dying, but I could be wrong about all of it. They’re not from around here. They’re not dogs or cats; they’re not the same kind of animal we are at all. I try to keep them still and happy, but maybe when they’re still that means they’re in pain. Maybe I’ve been torturing them all this time without meaning to. Maybe they’re invading Earth and I’m the one making it possible, and in another ten years all these dead aliens are going to come back to life and take over the world.”
He listened to me, his face still and serious. “Yes. It’s hard, isn’t it, not knowing if we’re doing the right thing? I don’t think any of us ever know, not really. We do the best we can, and we pray to do more good than harm, but we have to trust God to see it all, and to sort it all out, and to forgive us when we go wrong.”
I looked away from him. “I don’t believe in God. No offense.”
“None taken, Welly.”
“Good. What happened to your ear? I saw you on TV, feeding those bag ladies. That’s how I knew who you were, when I saw your ear.”
“It’s a birth defect. My family didn’t have enough money for plastic surgery.” He shrugged. “I used to keep my hair long to hide it, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s a help in my work, frankly. People bring their scars to church. They bring the wounds they want healed, but they’re ashamed of them, too. If they can see mine, that makes it easier.”
“I’ll just bet,” I said. Nancy Ann had a little scar on the inside of her left thigh, high up. It was a birthmark, too, like Humphreys’ ear. It didn’t take Jebediah very long to see that one, did it?
The second cucumber went
“Why do you suppose they come here?” he asked me.
“Damned if I know. Maybe they’re sick and their people send them away so they won’t infect everybody else. Maybe they’re dead already when they get here, and Earth’s their eternal reward. Now that’s scary, isn’t it? Maybe when we die we’re all going to land on some alien’s doorstep, and we just have to hope they’ll have comfortable chairs for us and find out what kind of art we like.” My heaven will have Lay-Z-Boy recliners and Penthouse Pets, but I wasn’t going to tell Humphreys that.
He smiled. “In my father’s house are many mansions.”
“What?” But the last cucumber went
He looked at the gravy bags, and then at me. “How do you—what do you do with them? Afterwards?”
“I bury them. I’ve got these things all over my property.”
He nodded. “Do you need help?”
“If you’re as good with a shovel as you are with a pail, I could use the help, Reverend. Thank you.”
So we piled the gravy bags into my pickup, and I threw a tarp over them and loaded up a couple of shovels, and then I drove out to the next gravesite. I’ve been keeping track of where the cucumbers are, so I can pick a fresh place each time. I brought the gun with me, but that was in case we ran into snakes or something: I wasn’t worried about Humphreys anymore, not that way.
He was good with a shovel, strong and fast. He hadn’t always been a preacher, you could tell. He’d done manual labor someplace. Watching him dig, I started to get curious. When we stopped to take a break, I said, “So when were you in front of guns before?”
“In Africa.” He wiped the sweat off his face. “In Zaire, back during the eighties. A group of us were rebuilding a church. Mobutu’s thugs had burned it down because the clergy were speaking out against the government. And the soldiers came when we were rebuilding, and they lined us up against a wall and threatened to shoot us all. I still don’t know why they didn’t. They killed plenty of other people, before and after that.” His eyes got far away, then, and he said, “All the people I worked with there—they’re all dead now.”
“That’s not right,” I said.
“No.” He started digging again, and I let him. I know how working with your hands can help, when you’re upset about something. I re-roofed the house all by myself, after Nancy Ann left.
We got the cucumbers neatly buried, one to a grave, and Humphreys said a little prayer over each one, and then we got back into the truck to go back into the house. I was worried. I had to figure out what to do about him, and it would have been easier if he’d been easier to hate. “Reverend,” I said, “you were right before. I’m scared about what will happen if people find out about what’s been going on out here.”
“I’m not going to tell them,” he said. “This is under the seal of clerical confidentiality, Welly. I take that very seriously.”
I didn’t know if I could believe him or not. I wanted to, but that’s not the same thing. “I just hope I can trust you, Reverend.”
“I hope you’ll learn that you can. I can’t expect you to, yet. You’ve only known me a few hours. Earning trust takes longer than that.”
I grunted. That was a better answer than a lot of other people would have given. “Well, listen, you let me know
