Escape from Rodeo Burger—Chapter 9

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I remember that from The Orphange. I had to memorize it and recite it back to one of the nuns. It is from Ecclesiastes. I remember one kind nun who wasn't like the others. She showed me her face and though she had no nose, no ears, no eyebrows, and no hair, she was beautiful to me. Her green eyes were full of love and kindness. Her name was Meera. She had the best smile I've ever known. 

We flew over the pink Kalgon Sea and I didn't speak at all. I just thought of all my memories, still upset about the fact I was the result of a cocktail and not a real person. It was as though a bartender shook me up. I was not born to a mother and embraced by her, loved by her. Not wanted or accepted. Not nursed and fed in compassion and love, rather, by a cold and sterile society that would slit my throat and process me into food when the time came. That was my purpose. My sole reason for being. 

I wondered if it meant that I had no soul—because I was born this way. Then I thought how ridiculous that was. Simply for the fact that I was not conceived in some lustful exchange in some seedy motel or bedroom by two horny parents meant nothing at all. There is nothing special about being the product of lust. There was no difference biologically. And the arrogance of humans in the belief that they have a soul that all other living things lack, is absurd and pompous to say the least. How we fall short of the Grace of God is an incessant amusement or an abysmal disappointment, depending upon how one looks at it. 

Bill sat to my right and the crew manned their guns and positions, ready for the Kalgonian response to our invasion that would surely come and be swift. Instead of .50 cals and whatever WWII pilots had at their disposal, The Blonde Bombshell was equipped with proton lasers and sophisticated death rays. There were bombs at the ready and one big boy named "The Baby" in the belly of the bomber, which one of the fishmen happily sat on to be out of the way of the other crew. He looked young and goofy and the gills on the side of his neck flapped sporadically.

His job was to make sure The Baby cleared the hatch when released and didn't get hung up and kill us all. I turned and looked at him and he was wearing one of those chintzy cowboy hats that they give away at Rodeo Burger with the purchase of any two Cowboy Cody meals or four large Yeehaw burgers. He smiled at me and then looked away. He was a boy, barely a man. And I couldn't help but to wonder if he was once a minnow, an anchovie, or caviar before realizing I know nothing about fish. 

The feeling of familiarity overcame me yet again, and the sound of the engines lulled me into a hypnotic state in which I could see myself flying this plane in a former life—in World War II to be precise. The pink ocean below became an ocean of sand, and the foam-capped waves became dunes of bright gold which would blind you to look at without sunglasses. I looked over and in place of Bill there was Ron, who was from Chicago who had told me a dozen times or better how his father worked for Al Capone and how he met him before he could remember. There is a picture somewhere of Al Capone holding him as a baby. 

I smiled. And the crew—humans, not fishmen—came up one by one as though they understood that I was back from some sort of inexplicable hiatus and they all called me "good ol' Charlie-boy" over and over, each of them patting me on the back and rubbing my shoulder and saying kind things—things people say to each other when they are about to die and they know it. When the panic has fleeted and acceptance has drowned all sense of fear. When grief has fled leaving a void and an overwhelming sense of calm. 

Our engine was shot out and we were going down. I slowed the Bombshell as much as I could and we braced for impact. But in the belly of the bird was the bomb that we all knew would doom us. The hatch door had been damaged by enemy fire and would not open so the likelihood of surviving non-existent. The bomb would explode upon impact and we would die in the subsequent explosion. It wasn't something I could avoid. There was no emergency landing measure I could take that would prevent it. The landing gear was shot to hell and wouldn't deploy. We were going to die. 

But the plane was zapped in the middle of the blinding sun and we were froze—suspended mid-air. We couldn't see what held us, but something, it felt, grabbed us and wouldn't let go. Then the plane was still and we all looked at each other in disbelief, perhaps, assuming this is what it was to die in the throat of deafening silence that could not be logically explained. 

Alien intervention was the explanation. The US government would say simply that we were killed in action, but that was a lie. The Blonde Bombshell was taken by an Oregonian fleet led by Adam Berklantis. He simply wanted one of everything for his collection and was little more than a boy collecting war figurines. Planes and ships. Tanks and guns of all distinctions. No apparent preference of country. And it was our fortuitous fate that he just so happened to need a B-25 American bomber as we were about to crash and die in the North African desert. 

We lived on Oregonia for about twenty years in a sort of people zoo. I had a wife and a suburban-style home that aliens often visited on their vacations. It was a weird sort of make believe Earth, but I was relatively happy. My wife's name was Ginger though she wasn't a redhead. I knew she was an android, but I pretended she was real. Whenever she said she had to go to the hair salon, I knew she went to the TV appliance shop and got a charge. I saw her one day, through the window, plugged in, and it was as though I were a peeping Tom. Our town mimicked life on Earth in the 1950's and was named Homerville. I sold insurance and frequently jerked off.  

But after the death of Berklantis, his collection was dispersed, sold or scrapped, and us human relics were expendable and we were given the chance to return to Earth. I told Ginger goodbye and she wept and said she would just let her battery die, finally admitting to me that she was an android without ever at all saying it. And as I walked out of the house to leave Homerville, which was nothing more than a giant zoo, there she was on the couch, head down, quietly sobbing into her Palmolive palms. Why would an android cry?

But time travel and time warping is a horribly inaccurate sort of affair. And though we were promised to be returned to 1945 when the war ended, when we got to Earth it was 1984 and we had aged accordingly. There was E.T. and MTV and Punky Brewster and a world that was as foreign to us as Oregonia once was. We were all in our 60s and no one believed our story about the aliens, though they didn't have a better explantion as to how we just appeared after 42 years missing. 

The other guys' girlfriends and wives moved on, much to their heartbreak, but I didn't have anyone before the war so I was alright, though I missed Ginger and regretted not asking her to join me if they would have even allowed it. So I remained single. We were poked and prodded by the government, physically and mentally. We had cushy pensions and all-we-could-eat buffets and bowling in midwestern suburbia. I died in the late 90s. It was a perfect time to do so. The music really sucked.  

Before I died I would meet with the guys a few times a year. Then as we started to die, we went to each other's funerals. One by one we died, realizing each time that we were one person closer to death. I didn't know anything about reincarnation then. We were buried with 21 gun salutes, the whole nine yards. And then I died. And I remember my own funeral. I remember hearing a strange pastor speak kind words. I remember seeing a few family members strolling by me. Having a look. Remarking quietly to each other of how natural I looked. And then I floated on. Something like a butterfly floats on a waft, or an ember snapped off a burning pine log drifts into the night. And though I don't remember dying in that life exactly, I remember waking up. I remember The Orphange and Meera's kind face. The pity in her eyes and the way she caressed my cheeks. Her thumbs wiping away tears I cried for a reason I didn't know. For the sadness and sorrow I was born to, or for the love I was born without. 

I woke up and I was in The Blonde Bombshell with Bill, my liquidous copilot, by my side. Kalgonese ships had identified us and were letting us have it. Giving us the business, as we would say in another life. We were able to repel most of the strikes against us, and though we took some damage, it was already too late for Kalgon City. The fishman junior cowboy who was sitting on The Baby forgot to get off and rode the bomb to his death down the gullet of Rodeo Burger just like in that movie, Bill said. I don't know, however, what movie he was referring to, as I had never seen it. It isn't everyday you see a fishman ride to his death on the back of a bomb, but sure enough that's what we saw. 

Fishmen aren't the sentimental sorts. No one wept for him, rather, they watched the bomb and their cohort make their mark and we peeled off into the pink morning sky as Rodeo Burger's headquarters was leveled in a giant mushroom cloud along with most all of Kalgon City. It was a catastrophic loss of life by any measure. I thought of the woman from Lithuania whose name I could not remember to include in any prayer—old whatsherface—I suppose I could have said—the one who told me about the Hill of Crosses. If she hadn't already died, she would be dead now. But she would go on, as we all go on—those of us who believe in Jesus Christ and accept him as Lord and Savior. I didn't know about the rest of them. I don't want to know about them. To picture their deaths in the the theater of my mind. 

There was an eery calm afterwards. Bill smiled ecstatically as though we had just accomplished something wonderful. This wasn't Hiroshima and we weren't the Enola Gay—the Japanese people didn't deserve that. But Kalgon City was wicked and they deserved it. Behind us the flames lapped every last inch of their wickedness and consumed them whole. There would be no more Rodeo Burger. The restaurant would shutter up and serve no more children of Earth thanks to The Baby and The Blonde Bombshell.  

"Safe to head home, sir," Bill grinned, his watery translucid eyes giving away his eagerness and thrill to still be living as though it was unexpected. 

"Not yet," I said. I charted a new course to the Kalgonese countryside and kept the crew in suspense. The industrial filth of the city morphed into rolling emerald green pastures. It was grass, as on Earth, with bushes of berries and trees native to my home planet. Acres of open land, for cattle to graize or horses to wander, but without a single animal. And there it appeared below us in the distance—that gray tomb of building I once knew well. 

"What the hell is that?" Bill asked. His mouth open in suspense. 

"The Oprhanage," I said, bearing down to land. 

"We are landing?"

"Yes."

"Whoah, wait. We can't possibly land..."

"Sure we can. And we are about to," I replied confidently. 

"For what reason?" 

"To see who we can save, Bill. We must save someone."

"But we just saved millions by destroying Rodeo Burger. They can't possibly recover from that."

"This is the way, by God."

I found a good relatively level open stretch, deployed the landing gear, and turfed the plane which came to a rough but relatively smooth halt no more than 100 yards from the building. The crew didn't know what I was doing, though their intelligence far surpassed my own. I got out and headed for the building. They were incapable of predicting what I would do because I was not the sort that led myself to predictability—irrational, they might call it. 

This was my home for the first four years of my life so it wasn't foreign to me. I recognized the feeling of the gravel walkway beneath my feet and the smell of the Daphne bushes and the evergreens that towered near the orphange and leaned over in a breeze that felt empty, or as though it had stolen everything away. The door was unlocked and no one was there. Perhaps, they didn't use the building anymore. It was once so full, but now it was like a tomb, though I could still hear the phantom laughter of chidlren playing games in the rooms and hallways. It wasn't all terrible. We had each other. We were given some liberties, some things were made into toys. Balls to throw. Ropes to skip. Chalk to draw pictures. 

But it smelled musty and stale, abdent life. I walked into the Sanctuary and still on the wall was that chalkware Jesus in all his suffering. And I realized now that maybe he was showing us the way all along. Warning us about life, which is rife with travails, woe, and pain and suffering. It is inevitable. It is what it is to be human—both to love and suffer. There is no escaping it, no matter what we do. It cannot be avoided. 

But my ruminative lament was swiftly interrupted by a noise. I heard something in the Sanctuary—a door creak open followed by footsteps walking out and then running back and a door closing. Someone was here. Something was here. Perhaps, it was only a racoon, but I was thankful I brought my rifle and I slowly crept into the Sanctuary intent to kill that which I didn't know because we kill what we fear and we fear the unknown. 

Bill came in behind me but didn't say anything. One of the fishmen was with him. I suppose they were going to ask me when we were to leave. They watched me go into the Sanctuary, then they went outside. I treaded lightly on the marble floor so not to give myself away, but whatever was in there surely already knew I was there and, man or beast, they sought to avoid me.  

I remembered Meera walking me into the Sanctuary once when I got hurt playing. I remember the feeling of her hand holding mine. The tenderness of how it felt. And though in front of the other nuns she couldn't show affection towards me, how she did so daringly by holding my hand or helping me along, reassuring me that, despite everything, I was not unloved and I was not alone. They must have known that she was how she was. That she was kind and humane in a world of such impassive cruelty and utter cognitive dissonance. I wonder whatever became of her. I remember her giving me snacks and writing me stories on small pieces of paper. Snippets of nursery rhymes and fables I would read in bed. 

The Sanctuary was large and there were forty rows of pews that sat empty other than the chestnut stain of the wood and the hymnals and Bibles tucked in the pockets on the backs of the pews. 

She wasn't really a raccoon, of course. She was a little girl. She was maybe three years old and somehow, someway, she got left behind. She was spared. I found her under the first pew against the back wall, furthest from me, shivering in fright. She was in her blue dress uniform. She was clean and well fed, so I knew it hadn't been all that long since they left. 

I told her I wasn't going to harm her, and she looked at me with incredibly trusting eyes, as though, like the fishmen could read minds, she could read truth. She could sense good from evil, though my morality was certainly in question after just murdering an entire city, wicked as they were. But she knew I posed no threat. Maybe she trusted me because I was physically like her—having a nose, ears, and eyebrows. But she crawled out from under the pew and wrapped her little arms around my neck and wept. 

I looked at Jesus who hung above us. I suppose he was always going to hang there no matter who was there or who was not there. Even if it was only ghosts and mice, he would suffer for them. He was always suffering. Always waiting to be buried and redeemed. To ascend to Heaven. His truth is truth no matter who believes. No matter who doesn't believe. No matter what wicked people say or what righteous people do.

I picked her up and carried her out of the building. Bill and the crew were standing outside waiting for me. He said he never knew such a place existed. I asked one of the fishmen if he could read her thoughts for me and he agreed. And after pausing for several moments, he translated what she thought. What was behind her big blue eyes. 

"She says that everyone left a few days before. They all went to—Heaven. She says that a nun put her in a closet and told her to hide for as long as she could until she heard no noise. There was a mouse in the closet, so she ran out. And everyone was gone. She likes peanut butter and her name is Amoria."

One of the crew carried her to the plane and I went back inside. I took the cross off the wall and carried it out with me—over my shoulder—which must have been a strange sight for the mice and the ghosts. I don't know why I took it. I just took it. It was much heavier than it seemed. I put it in the plane and Amoria set with Carl the fishman, who also had a Rodeo Burger hat on which he took off and put on her head. All in good fun, I suppose. 

Despite the lumpy ground, The Blonde Bombshell took off from the grass with relative ease. I flew over the slaughterhouse, as navigated by Bill which was about 10 miles away and sat in a jagged rocky mountainous region. It was a one-story camp type facility surrounded by some type of electrical fence and it was full of children and pig-faced workers with large forearms dressed in crimson-stained white gowns. 

"My God," Bill said as we passed overhead. Some children were outside looking up at the plane until they were corralled back inside by the pigmen who had meat cleavers for hands. 

"What are we going to do? There's no place to land. We can't possibly save them all. We don't have room to save them all, even if we could."

"Then I will come back."

"No," Bill said. "Some things we need to leave alone. By the time you return, their fate will be decided. Perhaps, they'll revolt and overtake the slaughterhouse. Or the pigmen will go home now that Rodeo Burger has been destroyed. We can send back search and rescue ships tomorrow. But there is nothing you can do right now besides pray. Pray to Jesus. You must realize that life is pain. It is full of agony and loss. But it is also full of love and hope. One can dwell on one or the other or understand that neither good nor evil controls everything. It is and will always be a forever battle between the two in every aspect of life and it begins where God dwells—in the hearts of men."

I dropped several bombs and blew up the fence and part of the facility that appeared to ship meat out. The ships that transported meat to the galaxy were obliterated. There was a reasonable chance for them to escape. It was all that I could do. I knew that I must go back to Vespa. I had to see Esther and get Amoria off this planet and safe back to Earth. I'd have to forget about the slaughterhouse. In all the world, all the evil therein, there is only so much a person can do with the sword of righteousness. Sometimes you must simply let the world injure and heal itself. And as we flew back to Vespa, I wept without shedding a tear. My God, how I wept. I thought of Esther and felt the inexplicable deplorable feeling that I lost her.