Heritage and Shimmer, Page 2

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  “Welcome to the Patriot’s Memorial built by the Starwatch to forever commemorate the brave men and women of New Bethany, who defied the alien agenda that fateful, June night. Any contribution to the memorial’s maintenance fund is deeply appreciated.”

  Jayce rummaged through the empty coffee can brimming with silver change, his fingers digging out quarters while ignoring the nickels and dimes stained with spilled soda and coffee.

  Beverly took Jayce’s hand and forced him to pause. “I thought we were saving all those quarters so we could rent a private hotel room on our wedding night.”

  Jayce patiently smiled. “But we don’t need a room, Bev. My mother’s cottage has plenty of room to give us some privacy, and my mom will sleep in the camper parked behind the house if we ask her to. I thought we might put all these quarters to a better use. Thought we could donate them to the memorial’s upkeep. Don’t you think that’s the least we can do to honor the people of New Bethany?”

  “Of course you’re right,” Beverly sighed, “but you can’t hold it against me. Aliens or not, I’m still only a day or two away from being a new bride.”

  “And I love you for it, Bev, but let’s hear what the speaker has to say after I dump these quarters into the donation tray.”

  A small screen of blinking, red numbers tallied the total of Jayce and Beverly’s donation. The sum was hardly enough to afford the luxury of a private hotel room, but they hoped the offering might at least supply a little gas for whatever lawn equipment the Patriot’s Memorial required. The speaker perched just before the front gate again popped static, and the recorded words of a faceless narrator drifted through Jayce’s car window.

  “For an additional fifty dollars, the Patriot Memorial will reward a bumper sticker for your vehicle.”

  Jayce sighed. “I wish I had more money.”

  “We will one day.”

  “Where would I be without your faith, Bev? I’ll just hit this button on the console to let it know we don’t have anything more to give tonight.”

  The console clicked and the narrator’s voice returned. “Nearly three decades ago, the vanguard warship of the alien armada appeared over the star-filled sky above New Bethany, scouting humanity’s defenses for weaknesses they might exploit to establish a permanent foothold upon our dear planet. But thanks to the courage and sacrifice of the men and women resting in this cemetery, humanity turned away that malicious force from the heavens.

  “The Starwatch encourages guests to the Patriot’s Memorial to stroll through the cemetery and consider the sacrifices made by these good, common people of New Bethany in their defiance of the alien menace. Please feel free to engage the holographic projectors mounted atop each of the cemetery’s tombstones to hear the residents themselves tell of their efforts that fateful June night. Special thanks to our cemetery’s sponsors, and please refrain from smoking while on these premises.”

  The mechanized iron gate in front of the vehicle opened, and Jayce guided his car along the single-lane brick road that curved beneath the barren branches of a dead grove composed of the carcasses of elm and oak trees. Beverly still mourned for the loss of so many trees, victims of another blight the aliens dropped upon the world. Beverly occasionally heard some elite academic or traitorous educator claim that a beetle, and not an alien, was responsible for the death of so many forests. Such fools could deny the truth surrounding them and imagine all types of conspiracies of science capable of giving a creature as small as a beetle such a power to devastate. Such conspiracies had been more commonplace before the Starwatch reformed the school system and insured each classroom taught a curriculum that set the blame for Earth’s environmental plight on the aliens where it belonged. It had taken years to purge the alien apologists from the schools and from government, and she was happy to think that the children the good Lord might choose to bless Jayce and her with would never be exposed to such falsehoods. But Beverly still missed the trees, missed them more than ever as Jayce’s small, dented car sputtered down that narrow lane taking them into the heart of the memorial.

  The wind drifted through Beverly’s rolled-down passenger window and moaned in her ear.

  “Do you hear something, Jayce? Something other than the car?”

  Jayce slowed the car and leaned his head out of his door. “Just wind. But it’s a somber place, Bev. It’s easy to let your imagination run away from you.”

  “I just thought I heard something,” Beverly shrugged. “Something pitiful and sad.”

  “There’s that superstition you must fight,” Jayce winked. “I think I might now something that’ll help. Turn on the radio, Bev.”

  “Why? There hasn’t been a radio station broadcasting for years. Not since the Starwatch shut down all the stations to silence the planet in case any aliens were listening in on us from the stars.”

  Jayce winked. “I think there’s a very limited signal broadcast within the memorial itself. Nothing powerful enough to lift up to the heavens. Just something to entertain visitors like ourselves.”

  Beverly twisted at the radio’s knobs. Her efforts at first produced only whines and screeches as the needle roamed from one end of the spectrum to the next. Yet the radio warmed, and her fingers found a small notch on the display that summoned a melody. Wholesome, patriotic music filled Jayce’s cramped car, chasing away the shudder that Beverly first felt as they rolled beyond the cemetery’s gate. Beverly smiled as she leaned back into her seat. How long had it been since she simply listened to music?

  “Jayce, do you ever dream of the luxuries we must’ve lost after the aliens? Do you ever imagine what the radio must’ve sounded like when there were so many stations before the Earth went quiet? Do you ever dream about what it must’ve been like to just watch television? Do you ever wonder what it must’ve been like to see a movie in one of those giant theaters?”

  Jayce shrugged. “Not really. All that stuff was just noise and distraction. It was all just brain-rot served to a world filled with purposeless people. We have to focus now. We have to be diligent, and we have to work, so that we’re prepared when the aliens return. We don’t have time for all that nonsense.”

  Beverly frowned. “Well, the song on the radio sounds grand.”

  Jayce chuckled. “That’s because it’s wholesome and patriotic.”

  The brick road deposited Jayce’s vehicle onto a tire-rutted field reserved for parking. The dead grove tightened over a cemetery of a handful of acres, and a small, wrought-iron fence, rising no higher than a man’s hip, defined the graveyard’s borders. Jayce pushed open the gate and stepped upon the first cracked stone of a pathway.

  “I wish I could’ve given more back at the entrance,” Jayce sighed. “It’s disappointing to see this memorial in such sad shape.”

  Weeds knitted throughout the cemetery’s fencing and nearly shrouded the path of walking stones which had originally been positioned to guide visitors through the tombstones. A pungent moss covered the trunks of the dead trees, and Jayce and Beverly struggled to follow the stone path without covering their faces in cobwebs. Empty cans and bottles littered the ground. Paper sacks trapped in trees fluttered in the wind. Carved initials and spray-painted symbols marred every surface of wood and stone.

  Beverly gripped Jayce’s elbow. “Did you hear something?”

  “That’s just the wind scratching through these dead trees.”

  “No. It was something else.” Beverly squinted in the direction of the noise. “There’s a man standing at the top of the rise just ahead of us. I can hear him humming.”

  Jayce and Beverly hesitated to approach the slim, tall figure swinging a weed sickle in the moonlight. The man hummed a melody neither of them recognized, likely another ditty that originated in that era before the aliens. The man’s long and slender arm lifted the sickle high above his head to the beat of that hummed melody, before that arm descended in a smooth arc that brought the sickle’s blade through a clump of weeds sprouting at
the edge of the walking path. The tall man gave no indication of noticing the arrival of the cemetery’s guests as he concentrated on keeping his work’s rhythm. A cigar glowed from between the man’s lips, and the illumination of that small fire revealed a haggard beard of gray littered with the meaty morsels and bread crumbs. The man’s trousers, frayed at the ankles and marred by holes in the knees, looked too short for his long legs, and he wore a heavy, stained jacket though the summer night remained warm and humid. A cloud of flies buzzed about the man’s pale, bald head, but he ignored such pests as he continued humming and swinging his weed sickle at the clumps of weeds crowding the cemetery.

  “How does he decide what weeds to swing at?” Jayce chuckled.

  Beverly pinched her fiancé. “Mind your manners. Haven’t you told me a thousand times that all work is noble work after the coming of the aliens?”

  “Happy to hear that I’m getting through to you, Bev. But noble work isn’t necessarily practical work. That man must be swinging a really dull blade, because it doesn’t look like he’s cut down one weed despite all his effort.