Saucer in the Dunes

7. Who Believes Now?

"So, did you hear?" I asked him excitedly.

He hadn't heard a thing when it happened. He watched the Braves on television, but his mom told him about it that morning.

"My mom sometimes works at night at Watson's diner up on the highway. She said the Army closed the road, and there was a newsman in there on the phone and everything!"

"Yeah, I heard all of it on the radio! Dynamite Don! Just like you told me."

Ronnie smiled out of the corner of his mouth and began kicking a stray rock down the sidewalk as we went.

"Dang. I wish I had heard it. The Braves lost again. They didn't even get on base," he said disappointedly. There was a good movie on after the game, though. Since mom wasn't home, I stayed up and watched it. It was a scary movie. Have you ever seen Invaders from Mars?"

I hadn't, but I loved old science fiction movies. I had seen some of them at the movies on Saturday, but not that one.

"No, what was it about?"

He stopped for a second and ran his fingers through his short, cropped hair.

"It's kind of like what could be going on here. This kid sees a flying saucer crash in the hills behind his house. No one believes him. Then his mom and dad get caught, then the police get caught. They all get turned into zombies controlled by the aliens. It's a cool movie, though. In the end, it was all a dream, but just before the movie ended, a real saucer crashed behind his house."

"You don't think anything like that is going on here, do you," I asked.

"No, not really. Mom said She said some of the people that stopped in there did, though. They said it wasn't a plane either. They had seen something up the highway. Mom said you could see way out in the dunes from the diner, and there were a lot of lights. It was too far to see anything, but she said there definitely shouldn't have been anything going on out there."

"Really?" I shot back.

"Yeah, that's what she told me this morning, that it was a plane, I mean. She was tired but didn't believe it was a plane either."

"My mom told me it was a plane this morning. She was scared last night, I could tell. She said she and dad heard it on the radio late last night that it was a plane, and she hoped no one had been hurt. She doesn't really believe in anything like UFOs or stuff like that. She doesn't really even like me to read all those magazines."

"Mine does," Ronnie answered.

"I think so anyway. My mom told me she didn't want me going anywhere near that place.""You mean you know where it is?"

"Sure," he said, stopping to look before we crossed the road to get to the small row of brick buildings on the other side.

"Well, honestly, not exactly, but I bet I could find it all right. I've been out there before. It's quicker if you go through the woods and out past the flats."