Heritage and Shimmer (3 page)

Simon giggled. “Oh, forgive me for laughing.
Don’t think I mean any offense by it, son. It’s just hard for me to
believe that New Bethany’s come to mean so much to folks.”

“You must be very proud of your community,”
remarked Beverly.

Simon shrugged and led his guests through
several bushes of brambles to arrive at the next sight of his
impromptu tour. Beverly winced as the thorns scratched at her
ankles and clutched at her hair. She did her best to emulate the
steps taken by the caretaker, hoping that Simon’s path might warn
her of the roots that might trip her, or of batches of poison ivy.
But Simon gave no indication that any of the overgrowth impeded him
in the least. He seemingly floated through it all, while Jayce
lowered his shoulders and trampled through any untamed growth.

Simon stopped at a clump of weeds and pointed
at three gravestones. “These three markers all share the same
holographic display. Press the button and hear another part of the
memorial’s story.”

The prospect of viewing humans instead of
aliens excited Beverly, and she pressed the button on the center
tombstone. The glass lenses installed in each marker winked and
projected a trio of young men out of light and shimmer.

“Hello, friend. My name is Kevin Aldrich,”
spoke the hologram on the far right.

The center figure tipped a ball cap. “My name
is Gavin Masters.”

“And I’m Hunter Garvin,” nodded the
third.

Jayce grinned. “It feels like I’m being
reunited with lost friends, Bev. These three men were the first
responders to the crashed alien saucer. We’ve read all about them
in our Starwatch textbooks. They’re the very men who subdued the
alien and carried it to New Bethany.”

Hidden speakers played more patriotic music,
a grand song of trombones, clarinets, tubas and trumpets that
lifted Beverly’s soul, wholesome music like the kind once regularly
performed by marching bands as they stepped in community festival
parades. Beverly tapped her toes to the rhythm, and she smiled to
remember how caramel apples and funnel cakes tasted when she had
watched those parades as a young child with her grandfather, before
the alien blight harmed the environment and collapsed the economy
until no vendors remained to sell corndogs and pork patties. The
music summoned such fond memories, and hearing the melody dispelled
much of the fear that gathered in her heart after watching the
alien warrior dance with such hatred in its eyes.

The faceless narrator’s voice returned as the
shimmering young men smiled at the guests. “These three young men
answered New Bethany’s fire siren that warned fire raged through
the woods surrounding the town. They had sacrificed many of their
weekends to learn the skills that allowed them to extinguish that
fire before it could reach their home town. Though exhausted by
their firefighting efforts, these men didn’t retreat when they came
upon the fallen, alien saucer. They didn’t run when they looked
upon the alien that challenged them at that crash site. When that
alien brandished its weapons and roared its war cry, these men
stood their ground and subdued that attacker. Realizing New Bethany
must be warned of the menace, those men courageously brought the
alien to town so that humanity realized its peril.”

Jayce lifted his hand to his heart and folded
his chin to his chest to give the holograms a Starwatch salute.

Simon cleared his throat. “I hate to have to
say it, but I’m afraid the narrator doesn’t have much of the story
straight. Kevin, Gavin and Hunter never volunteered for anything,
and they were simply out drinking and hunting with their coon dogs
that night when the alien landed.”

Jayce glared at the caretaker. “Say something
like that again, and I’ll let the Starwatch heritage offices know
they’ve got an employee on the payroll who’s defaming the fine
people of this memorial. You should be thankful for what these
folks did for you.”

Simon sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, son. My
mind’s too trapped in the past sometimes to realize the way things
should be. Follow me a bit further if you can forgive me.”

The third stop in Simon’s itinerary was a
heart-shaped headstone whose decorative stonework set it apart from
its neighbors. Fine cursive scrolled across the headstone, with
delicately carved stone roses surrounding the letters. Bouquets of
plastic flowers were piled upon the tombstone, and wooden crosses
holding pink ribbons were pinned all about the grave.

“Look at that color photograph taped to the
headstone,” pointed Beverly. “That woman was beautiful.”

Simon nodded. “They really painted her up
like a real looker.”

“Was she the nurse who first tended to the
alien?” Jayce asked. “Was she the woman who so courageously tried
to show the alien a little compassion?”

Simon pointed to the button installed atop
the headstone. “You better listen to what the Starwatch wants you
to hear.”

The projector’s glass eye winked and floated
an attractive figure of a smiling, young woman into the air. The
woman’s face was the same as that captured in the photograph taped
to the headstone, and the lady wore a nurse’s blue smock and clean,
white tennis shoes. The holographic woman smiled timidly before she
spoke.

“My name is Lori Page, and I worked at the
county emergency care center. I administered first aid to the alien
after it was carried into town.”

Beverly shook her head. “I would never have
done such a thing.”

Jayce chuckled. “The people of New Bethany
probably didn’t know the alien was a threat yet, Bev. It probably
took them a little while to realize an invasion was happening, and
that woman was just doing the best she could out of the goodness of
her heart. The Starwatch says that the care that woman tried giving
to that creature proved that we’re a better type of species than
those aliens.”

Simon chuckled before the faceless narrator’s
voice spoke from the headstone’s speakers.

“Lori Page took great risks when she gave
what comfort she could to the alien carried into New Bethany. Due
to her exposure to that invader, Ms. Page contracted a contagion
that rendered our modern medicine powerless. Ms. Page suffered for
the mercy she still administered to that alien, and she gave her
life to show humanity’s great compassion. Though we have little
means to know if Ms. Page’s mercy eased the alien’s suffering, her
mercy represents the best of us.”

Simon covered his mouth with his swollen
hands, but his twisted fingers failed to suffocate his laughter as
the caretaker wheezed for breath.

“What’s so funny about that?” Jayce growled.
“That woman died at a very young age thanks to that alien. Just
think about all she lost to show a little kindness.”

“I think what that woman did was very noble,”
added Beverly.

Simon caught enough breath to speak. “Lots of
visitors call Lori Page noble. They call her all kinds of nice
things that folks in town never called her before Starwatch erected
all these headstones in this cemetery. But I remember how it was.
Lori didn’t lift a hand to help the alien those three boys chained
to a truck bumper and dragged all the way back into town. She
screamed she wouldn’t do a thing to help ease that pitiful
creature’s hurt. She locked herself in her home, and the rest of us
didn’t have the stomach to look at the pain in that alien’s
oversized eyes. We couldn’t look at that alien’s mangled and broken
limbs. Lori’s actions shouldn’t have surprised any of us, seeing
how she never took her famous bedside manner with her into her
work.”

“You’re a stinking liar!” Jayce hissed. “Say
one more thing and I’m going to knock your ass onto the ground, old
man or not.”

The laughter vanished from Simon’s eyes. “I
don’t doubt you would try, son. Nor would you be the first guest to
this memorial to try.”

“He’s not worth it, Jayce.”

Beverly stepped between her husband and
Simon. The visit to the memorial was meant to be only a short
diversion from their drive to the mountains, only a short
distraction from the drive to the stone cottage of Jayce’s mother,
where the two of them would wed before enjoying a short honeymoon
before her new husband returned to Starwatch and his duties.
Beverly feared Jayce might lose his temper. She would hate to see
him strike the old man for mumbling such horrible things about the
dead. No matter how Jayce might be justified to strike that
caretaker, she feared such an assault would land him in jail, so
that their wedding would have to be conducted in some county jail
cell and their honeymoon ruined.

“It doesn’t matter what that caretaker says,”
pleaded Beverly. “The shimmering holograms tell us the truth. We
just have to press the buttons to know what really happened in New
Bethany.”

Simon shook his head when Jayce didn’t throw
that threatened punch. “Doubt there’s anything in this cemetery
going to shake whatever faith the both of you have carried to these
stones.”

Beverly took a breath before following Simon
to the next memorial. Jayce’s body language clearly conveyed that
he was not happy, and that Simon had stoked her fiancé’s temper by
his crude comments regarding those memorialized by the shimmering
holograms. She hoped the Starwatch academy instilled a sense of
patience within Jayce, as well as it had given him a commitment to
duty. Living upon the world’s remnants took a toll on the hardiest
soul, and it was a safe assumption to suspect that the years
might’ve severely weakened the caretaker’s mind. Simon was an old
man, and Beverly hoped Jayce’s uniform taught her fiancé to
practice forgiveness. But Beverly didn’t know what the academy
taught its cadets; for all she knew, Jayce might’ve learned that
anyone defaming the heritage of resistance so displayed through
that cemetery’s glowing holograms deserved brutal punishment,
regardless of age, regardless of lucidity.

Simon made a few turns and took them to the
very center of the cemetery, where he lifted his long arm to point
at the statue of a rifleman perched upon a marble column that rose
several stories into the air. A stone tomb rested in the background
of that rising column, weeds and vines growing across the sealed,
double doors that separated its dead shadows from what survived in
the sick world of the living.

“There’s where New Bethany’s greatest hero is
supposed to rest,” Simon smiled. “They say that the Starwatch even
locked the remains of their rifleman within a tomb, so that the
earthworms wouldn’t gnaw their way through to their hero’s sealed
coffin. They sure erected one heck of a monument for the poor
man.”

Jayce didn’t look at the caretaker as he
strode to the base of the marble column. “I imagined the monument
would be larger,” he sighed. “It should be built of alabaster and
silver, with gilded gold all over the walls. There’s never been a
hero in the annals of humankind more deserving of a temple. That’s
the resting place of the rifleman who almost single-handedly
repelled the alien invasion with nothing more than a hunting rifle.
That’s the tomb of Landry Jones.”

Simon winked. “Go ahead and press that button
on the column and learn what this memorial wants you to know.”

A bell chimed from within the tomb when Jayce
pressed that button, and the vines and weeds creaked and snapped as
the stone double doors opened to reveal the tomb’s darkness. A
trumpet blared, and then another march of drums and horns filled
the graveyard with yet one more wholesome and patriotic song.
Several holographic projectors positioned around that memorial
winked to life, and a handsome man, with a chiseled chin and golden
beard, walked out of the tomb before winking at the guests who
arrived to stare at his ghost. Beverly swooned when that rifleman
raised a muscular forearm and saluted her. That hologram was more
realistic than any of the others. Dozens of projectors whirled to
weave that rifleman into a complete palette of colors, and Beverly
thought she might reach out and place her hand on the broad
shoulders of that rifleman who emerged from the tomb. That figure
looked so corporeal. That figure didn’t shimmer at all. Beverly
hadn’t realized holographic technology had advanced so far. That
hologram appeared as alive as Simon Turner, even as real as her
beloved Jayce. Yet Beverly knew that the figure resurrected from
the tomb was no more real than any of the other figures of glow
summoned by the other projectors.

Simon lifted a finger. “The horns will stop
any moment now so that all the cemetery’s winking projectors can
tell another whopper of a tale.”

The rifleman bowed his head as if giving a
short, silent prayer after the last note. Then, he leaned against
his long rifle when the faceless narrator’s voice echoed from
speakers installed inside the dark tomb.

“Humanity owes a great debt to the hero
standing before you, citizen. Landry Jones’ marksmanship defended
his community of New Bethany and our planet Earth throughout the
night. Landry stood in the center of New Bethany’s main street and
downed more than a dozen saucer warships with his musket-loading,
hunting rifle, an heirloom of fine, cultural and historic
craftsmanship passed down for generations through his family. Had
it not been for Landry’s bravery, the alien armada may have well
overcome our world’s defenses before the rest of us became aware of
the menace that suddenly descended from the stars.”