Aliens and Strangers
by Lee Crandell
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The snowman is up-side-down, his little red balloon floating toward the ground instead of the sky. The snow is falling off the ground, swirling in the water. I put it down on the table - the glass globe with the shiny black plastic base. The snow is falling down now in a blizzard, the red balloon is floating up, swaying in the current of white flakes. The snowman is happily holding his balloon, staring blankly at the glass.
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It’s like everything’s for show. It gets shaken up and all the people start moving about, the pine needles shake in the wind, the cars fly down the street ... But you’re looking up at the glass, trying to see what’s out there.
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Walking down the long rough gray sidewalk home beside the road, plumes of white vapor cloud the lower half of my vision. Twig-like street lamps illuminate gradients of artificial yellow light onto the street and in my path, and make my shadow walk faster than me as I pass - my shadow behind me, racing past - my shadow looming out in front. The wind hums. The cars pass sporadically.
My feet make steady silent beats as sidewalk cracks glide past beneath. Left, right, crack, right, left, crack, left - my shadow races past again, another puff of breath streams out.
Another car passes by as if automatically, undriven. The red light turns green up ahead, but there are no cars for several minutes, so it’s just me and the green light.
I hear the heavy downshifting of a large truck bearing up behind me, and I hear its displaced wind. Four feet to my left the imposing mass overtakes me, the air pushed away engulfing me, freezing. It jolts me away from its overbearing presence. The light ahead turns red; rusty brakes screech, and the shuffling of animals can be heard inside. The truck is stopped. The brake lights cast a red glow on the road and on the leftover snow on the grass. Now the truck is motionless, and I’m walking past it, hands in pockets. There is movement through the grated trailer. Cows are shuffling about, mooing, looking out at me as I am walking by, looking back at them. The engine hums loudly as I step into the street to cross, and just as I pass the truck, the engine picks back up, the cows shuffle and moo again, and coast past me down the road toward the processing plant.
At home my fingers haven’t yet regained dexterity. I grasp a glass with a claw-like hand still thawing.
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You’re walking or sitting or doing whatever, and suddenly everything just strikes you. Not anything in particular, but just everything - maybe how your fingers are attached to your hand, or how there are a ridiculous number of needles on a pine tree - so many in fact that you probably couldn’t count them in a day if you sat down and tried.
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We were walking around the city for the day. We were at a crosswalk, waiting with the hoard of people downtown for the red man to turn green. The light changed, and the two of us stepped off of the curb onto the black pavement along with the wall of people on our side of the street. The wave of people on the other side moved towards us, and our two fronts converged. We were walking toward a couple holding hands. The crowd forced us straight towards them, and they towards us. They pulled apart, not letting go. Their arms stretched out as we headed towards their hands, which were locked in a knot. They let go before their hands hit our faces, but their arms stayed stretching out towards each other as they walked past our right and left, and we walked through them like a gate to the empty street on the other side.
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Then you think about how many of those pine trees (or whatever) are on the block, in the city, in the country ... It’s a strange feeling to suddenly understand how much there is in the world - how there’s always more detail to discover.
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The crowd is vibrating in the dim light. The windows are black. Shadows mask the floor. Heads are swinging; faces are plastic smiling; it smells like intoxication. The low rumbling bass pulses under the reeling guitar, shaking the speakers, shaking the feet. I’m on the edge, pushing through, by the door, moving out, jostled.
It’s cold outside, and the sky is clear, dark. They’re sipping beer on the porch, talking. The music sounds muffled and echoish out here. The girls have their arms crossed to try to cover up their exposed skin.
Laughter walks through the door back inside.
“All the waitresses there are gay,” is off to my right somewhere.
“Shut up! I was sick before I got here,” is louder, right beside me.
“You want my cup? I’m done.” It’s a girl I see around. I almost don’t realize that’s directed at me.
“Sure.” If I’m not drinking, then I’ll just be standing around doing nothing, which is kind of strange.
“So why do you come here if you’re not dancing?” She’s got a real question there, almost.
“I don’t know.” I really don’t. “It sounds appealing until I get here, I guess. Then I don’t remember why I wanted to come.”
“What do you mean?” She says this in an almost skeptical tone.
“I mean, it’s hard to forget everything and pretend this is it ...”
“You just have to do it anyway and you’ll forget soon enough. Let yourself go.” I don’t have anything to say to that. “You wanna dance?”
“Sure.”
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And the hypersensitivity can hit at any moment, sending your senses reeling, seeming to explode outward enveloping everything around you, yet at the same time, to implode deep inside you, withdrawing and blocking everything out.
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She is the woman sitting across from me on the train. It’s a small compartment with just the two of us sitting on dingy yellow padded benches with the brown burlap curtains drawn to cover the windows. We’re headed for Warsaw. She said something, but I don’t understand.
“Können Sie deutsch?” I understand now.
“Ja, ein bisschen.” Those are my first words in several days.
“Wo kommen Sie her?”
“Amerika, und Sie?”
“Ich wohne in Östereich, aber ich komme aus Polen.”
“Sie sind denn keine Ausländerin? Oder sind Sie Ausländerin geworden?”
“Ja, ich bin Ausländerin in meinem eigenen Land geworden ... Was machen Sie hier?”
“Ich reise nur um.”
“Aber gehen Sie irgendwohin besonders?”
“Nee, es ist doch egal wohin ich gehe - mir geht es nur um der Reise.”
A man opens the compartment door and says something. Light pours in from the walkway outside the compartment and reveals how dim it is in here. She translates for me, “Fahrscheine und Reisepass.”
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It’s like when you’re lying on your back looking at the stars on a cloudless night with nothing interrupting your vision. It’s just you and the stars, and the feeling of the earth against your back. You feel like you’re tied to a gigantic ball floating through space, floating through all those stars which are right in your face. There you are in the middle of the universe, stuck to the side of a planet by some invisible force.
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She’s a chap-stick addict. As we’re driving to Wal-Mart that night, I can see her out of the corner of my eye - half illuminated by a car going the other direction - moving her hand up to her lips.
The parking lot is dark, polka-dotted with giant circles of yellow light, empty and stretching for hundreds of feet. We park on the edge of one of the circles closer to the entrance.
“Should I lock the door?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
The automatic doors open up to the store, and the warm breeze brushes against my face and hair. The pale walls and ceiling stretch out of view behind distant aisles and displays. We’re looking for tape. There are four places we could check - office supplies, school supplies, hardware and crafts.
We walk past a solid cube of notebook paper in the middle of the walkway. There’s no tape in school supplies. Office supplies is the next aisle over.
“I need brown tape.” Her hand’s in front of her mouth.
“Hmm. I’m not seeing any.” I’m staring at ten varieties of tape - all clear, some in translucent colors, and then there’s one with precut strips.
Hardware’s next closest at some two hundred feet. Every color of the rainbow is used to get our attention all the way there as we walk past large sale signs and piles of cheap goods on cheap metal shelves and displays.
“Nope.” Her chap-stick is concealed in her fist, and it looks like she’s smearing her fist on her face. We look blankly at the electrical and duct tape for a minute.
Crafts is another hundred or so feet. They have four kinds of brown tape. She grabs the cheapest one, and we walk to the far corner of the store - a good fifty yards - to the check-out.
The check-out lady is tired and middle-aged. She gives us a funny look as if wondering who’d want to buy brown tape at 2 a.m. - the same look she must give everyone this late at night.
The parking lot’s quiet and empty. My little red car is on the edge of a circle of light, half illuminated by the lamp overhead.
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So you’ve had this revelation, and you want to stop people and say, “Look at all those pine needles. Don’t you see them all? There’s so many!” You want to stop the cars and yell, “Don’t you see how crazy it is? You’re moving so fast in those cars, so close to each other, don’t you see it?” But they don’t see it.
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It’s sunny and warm at the farm. Sharp blue contrasts the cool white clouds overhead, and the light warms the left side of my face. The cows are grazing in the field - brown, white and black spotted under the aqua sky, smashing the grass into the dirt with their hooves. A man in jeans, button-up shirt and straw hat greets me. He told me last week he’d show me how it’s done.
We go out into the field and get a cow. As we walk it back, its hips sway and its bell rings.
The cow shrieks at the prod and falls to the ground, silent. The man raises a rifle to its head. The field resounds with an echoing shock and the mooing of cows in the distance. There’s some red smudged into the dirt. He’s cutting now. A puddle leaks into the grass. The color red is glistening in front of me. The knife is tearing the meat from the carcass. Blood leaks toward my shoe, and I step a little away. He puts the meat into a cooler with red hands and red-splotched jeans. Crimson footprints speckle the dirt. We’re walking at the edge of the field in a stench-blowing breeze.
My car is small and red. It’s self-propelling at 74 mph down the open interstate with a small cooler in the back. There’s red dirt on the brown carpet by the gas pedal.
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But then when you remember how small you are in the middle of it all, you shut up. You withdraw, observe, and realize the insignificance of whether you order a grilled chicken burrito or two grilled chicken tacos. So you just stand there staring at the menu, not knowing why.
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The place looks cold and empty at night, and no one is around except a few other tired faces pacing slowly around on the white tile floor. The ceiling rises high above my head, the floor is below my feet, and walls loom in the distance, behind the many aisles of colorfully packaged foods screaming at me. The mess of silver metal glides in front of me on its wheels, and my hands rest on its black plastic handle. The ends of the aisle seem to float past me as I turn. Another silver cart glides past me, dragging another tired face behind it, expressionless. And the sound of the rolling wheels mixes with the empty stream of music in the background, the nondescript pop music, which is supposed to keep me company. But I’m still rolling forward, with countless foodstuffs to my left and right, shouting out in red, blue, green, black, gold, yellow, silver, clear, plastic, glass, cardboard, metal. The Campbell’s soup kids laugh solemnly from their shelves - staring through me, at me, at the chips across the way - brightly colored bags of crinkly plastic. And I’m still strolling past. All is silent except the hollow music and the laughing colors, and as I turn a U around the end of the aisle, I feel the cold escaping from the freezer along the back wall, where plastic-wrapped red flesh lurks on Styrofoam trays marked $3.22, $3.27, $3.18. And the expanse of the place opens up for a moment before I enter another aisle. Fifteen feet of toothpaste loom ahead on the left in assorted boxes of cardboard. My cart rolls to a stop, and I turn to face the toothpaste. It stretches above my head, and to my left and right. $2.50, $3.25, $3.95. Crest, Colgate, Aquafresh, Equate, Rembrandt; whitening, tartar control, long-lasting 24 hour action, cavity protection; bubble gum, mint, baking soda, peroxide; red, white, blue, small, large, silver, shiny, glossy, plastic, cardboard - all glaring back as I stare blankly in their general direction, looking through in indifference.
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And while you stare the image of the chicken trucks on your street jumps to mind, and you wonder where they came from. They’re hidden away somewhere where we don’t have to see them - so that when we hear the word “chicken,” we imagine sandwiches and fried wings rather than a fluffy white thing in a cage.
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I’m at the ATM. I get my cash first, then wait for my friend while he’s getting his money. I stand about ten feet behind him, near a bus stop, and a thin stream of people walk by on the wide gray sidewalk. I look out into the street, when I see a small woman out of the corner of my eye. I turn and must have a startled expression on my face which I cannot control. My eyes hit another pair of eyes, crooked and framed by scarring.
I utter a timid “hi” at seeing her face, but she says nothing back. She’s just under five feet or so, hunchbacked. Her skin has scars like burn marks, and her long scraggly white hair is thin and missing in spots. Her pale lips look to have soars and at first glance her whole face seems to be decaying. Her face points a little downward while her muted brown eyes look up at me, offset by over an inch and crooked. Her nose is bent. One arm pulls a little cart, and the other is missing, the sleeve hanging limp. She’s dirty.
She has an expression that says, “You know what I’m going to say; please don’t make me say it.”
She keeps looking at me, with her lips slightly spread, but she has trouble speaking.
I try to avoid her eyes in an awkward moment, and glance back at her every second or so. She’s still staring at me with her crooked face, and she’s standing just as crookedly.
Then she manages to ask me in a hoarse whisper if I have some money to give her. I keep my hands in my pockets and stare straight ahead and say “no,” and then realize I’m lying as she’s limping away slowly. I see her reflection in the glass window of the bus stop as we walk away.
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The truth is shocking, but our methods of hiding the truth are even more shocking. Your chicken in that taco came from far away - probably several states away - and it was processed so you wouldn’t have to kill it, or see it killed, or even think about it being killed. And that’s not to mention the tortilla, beans and vegetables.
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It flew in on the morning commute. The stone faces on the train melted and grinned, at least most of them. The others looked slightly disturbed as the pigeon flew frantically up and down the aisle, looking for a place to rest and settling on their heads. They ducked their heads under their arms while others laughed. We broke the train etiquette and we all looked each other in the eyes together. We all watched the lady get up and pick the pigeon off the man’s shoulder, cupping it in her hand. She had “everything under control,” while she waited triumphantly at the door of the train for the next stop where the doors would open up to confused morning commuters interrupted by a pigeon on their way to board.
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I’d rather just kill it myself and know what I’m doing when I eat it.
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The TV’s in the corner. We’re talking over it.
“No no no, there’s no way ...”
The room is pulsating with light.
“Yeah, yeah, didn’t you see it?”
Their faces are glowing blue, then red, then white, flashing, then darkness for a second.
“I don’t know how you could miss it.”
The TV is vying for attention, “Always low prices ...”
The phone rings.
“I went there the other day; I didn’t see it.”
Music is playing in the next room.
“Yeah, uh, he’s not here right now ...”
Someone opens the door and lets in a cold gust.
“Well, are you sure you were at the right spot?”
Cars are passing by outside the window, their engines whirring, fading in and fading out.
“Hey guys.”
The ceiling is pounding from the people upstairs.
“Always ...”
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But the details are always there, pounding on your ears, your eyes, your nose, always there to remind you where you are - in this little globe, where everything is strange and alien.
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We waited for the train in darkness - only the timbers of the stop were lit yellow by the lamps. There was tension in the air after we had gotten on the wrong train and ended up going north instead of south due to a change in the schedule after 2 a.m. We watched in silence for the lights down the track, and stood in anticipation when we finally saw them in the distance. The tracks rattled and the train roared up to us, slowing down. And then in the front car the window slid open as it approached us. The conductor leaned out before the train stopped and looked around. He smiled when he saw us. “Have you seen the moon?” he said as the front car slowly rolled past us. “Come look, look,” he beckoned us with his hand, gazing ahead, rolling forward. We jogged after him, following his call, to the end of the stop, where he finally stopped rolling ahead. “Look,” he pointed at the swollen half red moon recently risen, leaning out of his window. He grinned wildly at the sky and we stood with him for a moment before getting on the train and heading back south.
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Maybe you’re holding my little snow globe now, looking in at my world. How could I ever know. All I can ever really know are the words I’m thinking now. The only thing you can really know are the words in your head too. What happens then if you’re looking into my globe, drinking in my words into your own head? Does that make all this real?
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“Doors opening.”
The voice echoes from the speakers overhead and from a guy sitting across from me. The doors slide open after the ding and the chorus of the mechanical train announcer and the flesh robot across from me. He chimes in right on cue.
“Doors closing. Next stop is Washington. Doors open on the right at Washington.”
Their voices blend together - the hollow voice of the invisible machine and the raspy voice of the man with his jeans pulled high over his bulbous abdomen.
The train roars at a frightening volume, pausing for the chorus.
“This is Washington. Doors opening.”
There is a rush of people who find a space in the aisle and stand staring, trying not to look anyone else in the eye.
The chorus chimes in in eerie synchronization, “Next stop is Lake. Doors open on the left at Lake.”
Their eyes become more uncomfortable, trying to look away from the fleshy robot man spewing out the announcements in stereo. They smile nervously, holding back uncontrollable laughter, glancing about to hide their suppressed notions.
I’m looking out the window trying to avoid his unflinching empty gaze. But I see him in the reflection, his mouth moving in sync to, “Doors open on the right at Fullerton.”
“Doors opening.”
“Doors closing.”
I’m ascending out of hell on a narrow escalator that looks like it was built over top of the already narrow stairwell. The tile walls are sweating from the human exhaust.
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So I think you really are there watching me, but there’s nothing I can really do about that is there? I can’t even really know, but I feel it. It’s like I’ve seen your fingerprints on the glass too.
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We were lying in bed together one night. We didn’t know each other terribly well. I could feel her foot against mine, brushing against it softly, but we didn’t do anything. We fell asleep.
We woke up in the morning and lay there awhile, both awake but saying nothing. Then she said, “I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamt that I woke up and there was a glass globe around the bed, and you were banging on it, crying and trying to get out, but i was just lying here watching you. And it was snowing, and there was snow on the comforter, but i wasn’t cold.”
I suddenly felt heavy and cold under the comforter. I didn’t say anything for moment, and then all I could say was, “That’s funny.”
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I wish you would smash the globe on your floor. I can see it now - everything would tumble and crash, and nobody would understand at all what was happening. There would be the most panic ever. The oceans would rush out and the ground would rip, and we’d all fall out onto your floor, gasping at the real air.
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My bed is right next to my window, which is cracked a little to let fresh air in. I lean my face in toward the window. I drink in the cold oxygen; my nose numbs. My breath floats out in a white cloud, clouding the edges of the glass. Snow is glistening orange and white in an aura around the streetlight, and the lot next to my building is turning white. I roll back away from the window toward the room.
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“And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.”
Hebrews 11:13