"Hi," I said. "I'm here to donate a shark."
The woman at the desk in the college biology department looked up at me. "Oh, yes," she said. "The professor mentioned you'd be coming."
I handed her a small jar, with a preserved shark inside it. "One of our library patrons gave it to me. Honestly, I had no idea what to do with it, and having it on my desk creeped me out a little. I thought you guys could use it."
She laughed. "We can definitely use it. Thank you."
"Since I'm here, I might as well stop and check something else. Which way is geology?"
The Geology Professor was working at a microscope when I walked in. She looked up and said,"Oh, hi, Lou. What can I do for you?"
"Since I was in the building anyway, I thought I'd stop by and confirm our program for Thursday. You'll be in talking about meteors at six."
"Meteorites, actually."
"Meteorites. Of course."
She nodded. "I'll be there. I'll have some samples of meteorites, as well. Would you like to hold one?"
"You know, I kinda would."
She handed me a heavy chunk about the size of my fist. It felt like metal. She said,"This is a stony-iron meteorite. Do you know how old this is?"
"Older than I am, I assume."
"Ten million years old. And it came from another world. You're holding something that...."
"I'm holding something that isn't from this planet," I said. "It's actually amazing. Have any meteorites ever hit Clinton County?"
"You know, I'm not sure," she said. "Maybe you should check into that. There might be a historic record, which is definitely your sort of thing."
The thing about the nuts is that once they get to know you, they will hunt you down. As soon as I got off the desk, I turned around, and BAM! There's the guy in the white robe, standing right there behind me.
"I can't get my car out of the garage," he said, apropos of nothing.
"Uh-huh." It's real hard to know what to say sometimes.
"The guy said it would be five hundred dollars, but now he's saying it's fifteen hundred."
"Umm."
"He's trying to steal my car. People are trying to steal my car and my money. Also someone stole my phone"
"Mhm."
"You haven't heard any rumors about me, have you?"
I looked up. "Uh....What kind of rumors?"
"Somebody was telling everyone I have a bunch of guns in my car. A whole LOT of guns."
"So, I better get back to work," I said. and retreated to my desk to look busy. "Hey!" I saw my friend Chris passing my desk, heading to the Reference Room. "Wanna look into an old legend? It's Henry Shoemaker."
His wife, Kate, was with him. She glanced at me. "Is this how you greet everyone?"
"Mostly just Chris here. How you been?"
"Good, good. We've been invited to join the board of Highland Cemetery."
"We can sure as hell use the help," I admitted. "I'm gonna pitch a fundraiser ghost hunt up there, in the cemetery. I'm hoping the board will let me get away with that."
"I'd vote for it."
"Chris---I got a theory."
"About these Henry Shoemaker legends? Let's hear it."
"Got a program coming up about meteors. Meteorites," I said. "I asked if there had ever been a meteorite strikein this area, and my geologist didn't know. So I looked into it. It turns out there has been. Out in Muncy, for one thing, near where Michelle works."
"Isn't that where evil first entered the world, according to Shoemaker?"
"Yep. There was a legend about the gods sending a creature burrowing underground to test the tribe, creating the mountains and erupting up through the ground. Now, it makes sense that a legend like that might come from a meteor strike. Workers found a meteor right there, in that spot, in 1891. It's on display at Bucknell now."
"You think the legend may have come from a meteor?"
"Well, meteorite. There was another legend, the Grandfather Pine....You know that one?"
"I don't think so."
I picked the book up off the shelf. All the Henry Shoemaker books are right across from my desk, which is convenient as hell. "In the olden days, the Earth loved the Evening Star. Which was probably Venus actually, but anyway. The Earth was so upset at not being able to be with the star that it cracked open, and a creek ran out---This was the Earth's pain. Don't give me that look, Kate, I don't write 'em."
Kate grinned and shrugged.
"So the Earth grew a tree, near Loganton, a huge tree, to reach to space and reach the star. It was called the Grandfather Pine. When the white men settled in the area, some warriors climbed up the Grandfather Pine to go to space, but then the loggers cut down the tree, and they never came back."
"Stranded."
"With my theory that one Shoemaker legend was caused by a meteor....ite, why not this one, too? The bit about the world breaking open and releasing a spring sounds like it could have begun with a strike. Want to look into it?"
"Yeah, I'm in. How we gonna do that?"
"We're gonna drive down to Loganton and look for it."
Sometimes it seems like I've spend half my life away from home. Work, camping, and travel add up, and I've gotten the feeling that I've spent way too much time in tents and hotels. Of course, there are other reasons to stop in a hotel. Like my daughter works the front desk.
"Hi, hon," I said. I tossed her a hat, with an alien patch on it. It looked like mine, except hers was yellow and mind was black. "Got you one, too."
"Hey! Thanks!" Biz looked it over. "I love it!"
"Well, Michelle wore mine and liked it, so I got her one. Then Paul wanted one, so I got him a pink one. And at that point, we're already that family, so I figured I'd get you and Tif alien hats, too."
"Dibs on choreographing the family pajama Christmas dance."
"Been wearing my alien hat a lot at work lately. Because of the summer reading theme, I've been spending a lot of time working on UFOs."
"Learning anything?"
If there was one person I could confide in, it was my daughter, who was also after all one of my best friends.
"....I saw something, Biz."
"Really?"
"Down near the Jay Street Bridge. A purple light."
"Seriously? Purple?"
"Been having a hard time wrapping my head around it. It wasn't a....It didn't look like a plane light, or something. More like....I don't know, more like a streak. Purple."
"What're you gonna do?"
"Been investigating. LHPS won't help me. I gotta get down there and check for radiation, electricity, the usual. I'll have to see what I can figure out."
"Alien invasion. Cool."
"Yeah, so far I'm the only person dealing with the alien invasion."
'Well, that's about right, I guess."
"I'm gonna need more coffee."
I was checking our inventory for books about UFOs. I remembered having one right behind my desk---A book about UFOs sighted in Pennsylvania. Of course it mostly featured Kecksburg, sort of the state's UFO capital, but there were other sightings, too. And of course, it was missing---Someone had stolen it. Government cover-ups. Am I right?
I saw him, the lunatic with the white robe, just for a second. He walked past the desk, and then turned and walked into the staff-only area at the back of the building, right past the sign that said PRIVATE. I dropped the ILL form and ran after him.
"Sir?" In public service, you have to be polite, even to the lunatics. "I'm sorry, this is a staff-only area."
"The guy said I could come back here."
"No, sir. I'm sorry, this is employees only."
We walked out, into the hallway, and back to the desk. he argued,"I'm allowed back there!"
"No, sir, I'm sorry. That's for employees."
"You don't say anything about that!"
"There's a sign on the door that says 'private'."
"But that's only when the door is closed----"
"No, sir, it's all the time. That's a staff-only area."
"How are people supposed to know what's back there if they can't go back?"
"If there's anything that will benefit the patron, staff will know."
"I think you're being a worry-wart."
"It's not my rule, sir." This was exhausting. "That is a private area for the employees."
"But I'm supposed to be back there."
"Sir. You are not. Allowed. Back there. I'm sorry if that offends you, but that's the rule."
He walked off, muttering to himself. Great. Now I had this lunatic on my bad side. I finished the ILL report and took it back to Mel.
"Can you get me this one?" I asked.
She glanced at the form. "Yeah, I can probably borrow it from Williamsport. Let me print out the label....What's our code?"
"Same number as our address, to make it easy to remember."
"Why would I know our address?"
"Why the hell wouldn't you know our address? You don't know the address where you work?"
"I just come here. I don't need to know the address."
"Seriously? I mean, your whole job is getting things delivered."
"I just print the label."
"What if someone has a medical emergency, and you're the one who calls the ambulance?"
"I just say the Ross Library."
"What if you really need to order a pizza?"
"I say Ross Library."
"And the delivery guy is some idiot college kid who doesn't know where that is."
"I'll tell them I'm taking my business to locals who know the area."
"Okay, I respect that. But what if you want to have something delivered from Amazon---"
"This really bugs you, doesn't it?"
"Jesus. Just get me the book."
I walked down the street with my son and my flashlight. Paul and I had taken to going out in the evening and looking for UFOs. Every night around 9:30, we'd go out and keep the neighborhood safe from aliens.
"Remember, Paul, check the skies. Look at cloud cover. Note the location of the moon and the stars. Can you tell me which way is north?"
Paul pointed. "That way?"
"Right. Good job."
"Look! Daddy! Look!" Paul pointed up at the sky, where there were a couple of flashing lights.
"I see," I said. "Do you think those might be airplanes?"
"No! They're alien ships!"
"Okay."
We walked on down the block. It was getting a little darker, and Paul shined his flashlight around the street. There was a woman sitting on her porch as we walked past, talking with a black guy.
"Hi," she said. "What are you two up to?"
"Looking for aliens," I said. "Seen any?"
"And are you hoping to see any, or....?"
"Depends on the color."
She shook her head. "Don't be silly. If aliens exist, they haven't visited us."
"You're welcome," I said.
"You guys seem to be leaving South Jones Street, where I live, wide open," commented the black guy.
"I got a daughter who lives down there," I said. "She'll call me if she sees anything."
"Right on."
We walked on up the street, back toward our house. I stopped near a neighbor's lawn, where between the houses I had a clear view to the northeast, roughly toward the Susquehanna.
"There's a light, Paul. What do you think?"
Paul squinted. "I see it, Daddy!"
It was white, and moving roughly southeast, and I was about to dismiss it as a plane. Then it took a sharp turn---Much sharper than any plane that should be out at that hour---And came due west, toward us. I watched the color change from white to orange as the light grew a bit bigger.
"Daddy?"
"Just a second, pal."
It came toward us for about another minute, then turned red, swung straight up, and disappeared into the clouds.
"What was that, Daddy?"
"Little man, I think we just saw our first genuine UFO."
I was drawing the Loch Ness Monster when Tif showed up. Paul and I were waiting for her outside in the morning sun, sketching with chalk on the sidewalk. I was using green and blue to draw an aquatic, plesiosaur-like monster, and labeling it CHALK NESS MONSTER.
"Good morning," said Tif. "You ready for story time?"
"Yeah!" said Paul. "Daddy and me saw a alien last night!"
Tif glanced at me. "Did you, now?"
"Bright light in the sky, someplace near the river----The location was a little hard to tell," I said. "Started off heading east, turned toward us, then shot up into the clouds and disappeared. Behaved oddly for anything I can think of."
"You consider some sort of military plane?" Tif asked.
"That's pretty plausible. Some kind of drone, something. There's a twelve-year gap between what the military has and what the public knows. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were looking in the direction of the National Guard base in Dunnstown; I'll have to check that."
"It seems likely."
"Don't tell Paul. No reason to spoil his good time."
"Let's go to story time!" Paul said, climbing up on the back of Tif's wheelchair.
"See you later, Dad," said Tif.
"Catch you guys in a while," I said. "Have fun."
With my coffee mug that said Bigfoot saw me but nobody believes him, I walked up the stairs in my haunted house to my office room. I sat down at the computer and brought up a map of Lock Haven.
Zooming in on South Fairview Street, I located my neighbor's house and figured out which way Paul and I had been looking the night before. We'd been facing closer to due east than I'd realized. I zoomed back out, and mentally drew a line from where we'd been standing out to the approximate location of the UFO.
It crossed right over the military base.
Tif was right. Some sort of military item that wasn't yet public knowledge. I lifted my coffee mug at the screen.
"One mystery solved," I said.
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