Quicksilver(45)

I powered the windows of the SUV down an inch and left the engine running to ensure that Winston continued to have fresh and cooled air.

Bridget gave him the lamb squeaky toy for company. Maybe it was the first toy he’d ever had. He just stared at it as it lay there on the back seat, until she picked it up and encouraged him to take it in his mouth. With what seemed to be a bewildered expression, the lambkin hanging from his jaws by one leg, he watched us walk toward the trailer.

Considering that Hakeem Kaspar’s residence was the only one in sight and that, past his place, the dirt road seemed to lead into either a prehuman past or a posthuman future, it was no surprise that he heard us arrive and opened the door as we approached and carried a pistol in a holster on his right hip.

He appeared to be in his late forties, with decades of sunshine stored in his deeply tanned face. Judging by his name, I assumed his ancestors came from the Middle East, though he looked like a twin to the Cuban bandleader who was married to Lucille Ball in that old TV series I Love Lucy. His large eyes were open wide, as if something about us alarmed him.

Instead of asking us who we were, he said, “Stop right there and come forward one at a time to be scanned. I don’t know you. I can’t trust anyone I don’t know, and I don’t trust half those I do know.”

In his left hand, Hakeem held an object the size of a slim hardcover book, something rather like a Kindle, to which was wired an instrument resembling an infrared digital thermometer that he gripped in his right hand.

Assuming the thing wasn’t a weapon, I stepped forward. He needed perhaps half a minute to scan me, consulting a screen on the book-sized device. Bridget complied next, and then Sparky.

Hakeem said, “Okay, all right, you seem to be what you appear to be, if that means anything. Now who are you? ID please.”

I saw no point in pretending to be Bart Simpson or, for that matter, Bugs Bunny. I’d come there to ask him about the morning he’d found me in a bassinet.

When I held out my driver’s license, his wide-eyed gaze widened further. The suspicion that had iced his every word now melted into astonishment. “Q-Q-Quinn Q-Quicksilver? Not the one and same?”

“The one and same,” I assured him.

“From the bassinet?”

“I outgrew it.”

“They sent you away.”

“I came back.”

“My life was never the same.”

“The same as what?” I asked.

“Never the same—after you.”

“I’ve come to thank you for my life,” I said. “And to ask you about that morning. This is Bridget, who tells me she’s my fiancée, and this is her grandfather, Sparky. Do you want to see their ID?”

“No. That’s all right. They passed the scan. I’ve got to trust the scanner. If I can’t trust the scanner, then what can I trust?”

“So very true,” Bridget said.

“Is that a dog in your SUV?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You must be all right if a dog will associate with you. Dogs can always be trusted.”

He regarded us in silence, scanning our faces without using the scanner this time.

Then he said, “The only people I let in here are my best friend and my girlfriend. Everyone else I know, I either visit them at their homes or on neutral ground. You can understand that.”

We all agreed that we could understand, and I said we would be happy just to sit in the shade of the covered patio and ask a few questions.

His voice now hushed with awe, he said, “But you’re the baby in the bassinet.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I often dream of you as a baby. They’re good dreams. In them I’m famous and honored for finding you on the highway. You’re always three days old no matter how much time passes, and I never grow old as long as I’m with you, and all kinds of animals look after you, including a bear that feeds you honey with a golden spoon.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so uncharacteristically, I said nothing.

Finally, Hakeem said, “Well, I guess if you were going to spin me up in a cocoon or plant an egg in my brain or kill me, you’d have done it already. Come on in. Can I get you coffee or anything?”

I followed Bridget and Sparky up the three metal steps and into the habitat of a man consumed by an obsession.





|?21?|

Taped to the ceiling, walls, cabinet doors, and permanently lowered window shades were photographs torn from fringe magazines and downloaded from the internet, images of classic flying saucers as well as UFOs of other configurations. Some blurry or captured in half light. Others crisp and intriguing. Many of them sure to be hoaxes. Crowding every surface, they were a claustrophobia-inducing collection of extraterrestrial mystery.

The place smelled of clove buds that were piled in small dishes and placed strategically throughout the trailer. The essence was so thick in the air that I could taste it as well as smell it.

In the living room, forward of the galley, I had settled on the sofa with Bridget, while Sparky occupied an armchair. Hakeem sat in a second armchair but repeatedly got up to pace restlessly, now and then patting the grip of the holstered pistol, as though to reassure himself that he was still armed in case one of us attempted to plant an egg in his brain, after all.