Roswell: It Was My Fault
by Olaf Baumann
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
I am convinced to this day that I should have died. What I can remember is that the seat hugged me tighter. The fluffy material that covered me became more fluffy, like I was hovering in cotton wool or in a summer cloud. The stuff was as soft as it was dense. It held me even though it felt like it didn’t touch me. Strange contradictions.
Then a slam, like when you hit a piece of cheap, chewy meat with a hammer to make it tender. The sound was suspended in the time flow. What should have been a sharp, well-defined impact slap turned into an endless drone that stretched like old chewing gum. I noticed I had passed out only when I woke up again.
You know, it was like when you’re drinking. That last swallow of Saturday evening booze drops you, but you don’t realize that your lights go out, because time flows too fast for your hammered brain. You only figure out what happened the next morning, when you drift out of the depth of murky obscurity like a soap bubble floating away in a breeze. The Sunday sun licks your face like a playful puppy. You have no clue where you are, or who you are. Your entire existence is a jerk with a jackhammer breaking through your skull and a stingy taste of bile and regret in your mouth.
Gravity told me the saucer was tilted. The floor was now the wall. All the fluff had retreated into the seat. The lights on the control boards and screens looked like they had been before I pressed that fateful button. Whoever built that craft was a genius. He, or she, or it had made the spaceship idiot-proof. Even I didn’t break it.
I slipped off the pilot chair. I couldn’t support my weight and fell on the deck. I felt like Jello. I existed only as a loose collection of wobbly parts. Even if I wanted to, I wasn’t able to walk to the hatch. I had no legs in the normal sense. They were gelatinous appendages that enabled me to flow to the exit. Like viscous goo, I dropped out of the craft and coalesced into a human form on the desert floor. A stone stuck in my back. It hurt, but that made me happy. It proved I was still alive. I sighed, sucked air into my lungs, and I smiled.
It took me a while to realize that I was staring into an unshaven face. It was a farmer, maybe a hermit, gink, country pumpkin. Who knows? He gawked at me, mouth open, eyes wide, a paragon of shock and surprise. One of his incisors was missing. A half-emptied whiskey bottle stuck in his coat pocket. He smelled like a habitual connoisseur of hard liquor.
“Hi,” I said. No reaction. Just this uncomprehending, unbelieving stare that shifted back and forth between me and my flying saucer.
I don’t know what drove me in this moment, but I said, “Take me to your leader!” The guy flew backward as if I had punched him in the gut. He stumbled and landed on his behind. Out of his mouth came a guttural noise. He struggled back onto his feet and threw the bottle at me. He missed.
I am not good at comebacks. When I need a zinger to shoot back at someone, my head is empty. Doesn’t matter, no one expects an accountant to be witty. We’re a boring bunch, precise, anal, and devoid of humor. Numbers turn us into a physical embodiment of monotony. Except today I was driven by an exhilarating life-force that I had believed lost since my father crushed my dreams and put me on the path into middle management. “Do that again, and I’m gonna eat you!” I said. He gasped and took off screaming.
I hauled myself up and studied the UFO. It stuck in the ground like an ax in a chopping block. I saw no damage to the craft. That couldn’t be said about the sign post it had crushed. From what I could tell from the debris, it read Roswell, New Mexico — 5 miles.
Roswell, one of those godforsaken towns that litter the highways in these parts. Why anyone stopped at those dreary places, much less settled there, is anyone’s guess. It’s possible they, too, crashed their alien flying machines and stuck around hoping for the mothership to pick them up. I studied the area. No mothership anywhere. A long ribbon of highway stretched arrow-straight to the horizon, where it faded into the dust. All around me were variations of desert tans and reds.
Didn’t I see dust in the distance? Yes, a vehicle was moving quickly, and it was coming my way.
The driver who zoomed through in the morning wanted to get here yesterday. Maybe I could hitch a ride? When you start your day crashing an UFO, you’re not in the mood for an extended hike. I realized it was not just any car. It was my vehicle. Someone had stolen my ride and was speeding at me to rub that fact into my face or run me over?
The driver hit the brakes. Tires screed in agony and the car skidded toward me. Inches from impact, it screeched to a halt in a dust cloud. I coughed. As the air cleared, I stared into the eyes of the alien.
He, or she, or it was green, as if he, she or it tested how far he, or she, or it could stretch the cliche. But he, or she, or it was not one of those little green men. The pilot was huge. At least six feet something, built like a linebacker who wore his shoulder pads under his skin. He wore a plasticky coverall that changed color like a chameleon. I figured it was a spacesuit, because it had a ring around his tree-trunk sized neck that appeared like it should connect to a helmet. It had a bulbous head with a mouth, nose, eyes, and ears that were all more or less in the right place. The scales resembled oversized acne scars. Small yellow eyes pierced my soul as if she wanted to stab me to death with her gaze.
Best defense is attack. I was on a roll like never. Who throws the first punch wins, and so I gave him a dagger-shooting glance of my own. “You stole my car,” I said. “And let me guess, you drove without a license! That’s three to five years in county jail, easily! If you have an excellent attorney, that is. Otherwise, they will throw away the key and you can spend the rest of your days panicking about having to bend down in the shower to pick up your soap. That broke bigger guys than you are, believe you me!”
He answered something that sounded like a mix of a chicken getting murdered and a drunk seal who vomits on the floor. He fiddled with controls on his suit. A staccato computer voice translated. “I — should — punish—,” the alien said, and the unfinished sentence hung in the air like the silence after the guest of honor noisily passed gas during a state dinner. “You!” he concluded.
“What are you gonna do? Eat me?”
The alien made retching and croaking sounds and playacted vomiting with such a convincing passion that it was almost hurtful.
“I should be throwing around threats! What do you want here? What mayhem did you visit on those poor souls in the cabin? You touched their private parts, didn’t you?”
The alien looked at me and disgust made his, or her, or its scales crawl. “No. Outhouse.”
“What?”
“Only civilization in this sector with toilets. Others bush.”
“You went to the can?”
“Spacecraft: good machine! Forgot toilet.”
“Designed by committee?”
The alien nodded like a bubblehead. “You know phenomenon?”
“I do indeed.”
The green spacefarer and I beheld each other, realizing we had something in common. It was a precious moment between strangers at the crossroads. There was no more hostility and awkwardness in our encounter. I nodded and smiled. The alien nodded back. He, or she, or it snarled and bared its teeth. Close enough to resemble a smile.
“Must go. Flight plan tight,” said my green friend. He threw me my car keys and went to his ship. He pressed a button on his suit. The craft hummed and righted itself. He boarded his spaceship, and a few heartbeats later, the UFO soared starward.
I watched him get smaller and smaller until he vanished in the heavenly blue. My astronaut career had been rather short, but it left me strangely elated. I felt as if I was a freshly laundered bed sheet that dried in the morning sun. A gentle breeze moved me back and forth, and I inhaled that wholesome scent of fresh, air-dried, clean linen. It was as if the brief, violent ride had sucked vast quantities of gray dreariness out of my soul.
Thinking about it, what happened to me was the most exciting thing since I had discovered a peep hole in the wall of the girls’ shower way back in high school. I hadn’t peeked through; I’m no deranged pervert. Peeping wouldn’t have been right. In fact, I covered the hole with play dough and shoe polish, but that I could have looked had set my imagination on fire.
* * *
I searched through the empty sky. The UFO was gone. That didn’t matter. I knew they were there. That made me smile so broadly that my face muscles ached. I had flown a UFO, I had met a green space alien, I had not been eaten. This glorious day called for breakfast, and lots of it.
I wolfed down a third helping of pancakes, extra crisp bacon and blueberries when the farmer, hermit, gink, country pumpkin, or whatever he was burst into the Roswell diner. He was followed by an excited bunch of concerned citizens and story hungry journalists. They were foaming from the mouth and demanded explanations.
An overwhelmed Army Air Force major tried to calm the posse down. “I assure you, there is nothing to see here,” he insisted. “Please, take it easy. There is no crash. The godless Bolsheviks did not invade. Absolutely no green space aliens have landed in the desert, and the idea that they want to eat us is the figment of the overactive imagination of someone who reads too much pulp fiction. All you saw was a weather balloon.”
“That’s a lie!” yelled the guy I nearly crushed when I crashed the UFO. “I have proof!” He whirled around and pointed a bony finger at me. “There, that’s one of them! He dropped from the sky and tried to eat me!”
The group fell silent. They studied me as if I was a bug under a microscope. I stopped chewing and stared back. The conflict was palpable. I was not sure if they wanted to kiss or lynch me. Mouth full of pancake and bacon, I said, “Take me to your leader.” For an endless second, suspense paralyzed the crowd, then laughter exploded like a hand-grenade. They laughed, and tears filled their eyes. Time picked up its regular pace. Tense nerves relaxed and their nervous anxiety turned into hearty chuckles. Their cheer swept the tension out of the room like hosing desert dust off a car.
The guy gawked at his pointing finger, that hung in the air like forgotten socks on a clothesline. He had trouble comprehending what had just happened. A heartbeat ago, he was the living, breathing heart of a blood-lusting mob. Now they were laughing and slapping his shoulders. He took down his finger.
“Weather balloon,” said the major with a broad smile. “Weather balloon.”
They whipped around, and the gay cheerfulness evaporated like water droplets on a stove. They eyed him like a pride of lions who spot an injured wildebeest.
“Weather balloon.” The major moaned like a wimpy kid caught in the merciless grip of a bully who will stick his head into the toilet. “How about Uncle Sam buys ice cream for all?” They didn’t want to be bribed with frozen yogurt, they demanded the truth! In unison, they took a step toward the major. Bloodlust was in their eyes, and the major broke. “OK, fine,” he said. “It was a UFO. It was green space commies and we’re all going to die. Happy now?”
The journalists adored him as if they wanted to marry him and have his children. Like one man, they turned and hurried to find the next phone. The concerned citizens followed, leaving only the finger-pointer behind. He was the last vestige of the righteous fury that flooded the diner. Robbed of purpose, he toddled off.
The major breathed like a steam engine with a stuck valve. “Oh, crap.”
I offered him a bacon strip. He took it and slumped into the chair opposite me.
“I am a radio specialist,” he said. “But when I reported to duty in this God-forsaken desert, the general says, ‘So basically what you do is you talk?’
“Yes, sir. On the radio,” says I. That was the wrong answer. He grinned and slapped my shoulder as if he was my favorite uncle. ‘Well, then you can talk to the press, can’t you?’
“I am a communication specialist”, says I.
“‘Exactly,’ says he, ‘that is what I want you to do. Communicate. With the press. I need a press officer. You’re it. Make me proud and now get the hell out of my office.’”
Absentmindedly, he picked another strip of bacon from my plate and chewed. His gaze was almost philosophical.
“Last night I stole a UFO and crashed it just out of town,” I said.
The major nodded without looking at me. “And where is it?”
“The owner came and got it.”
“Of course he did.”
“He was green.”
“Of course he was.” He stood up. “Thanks for the bacon.”
Later that morning, I stopped at a crossroads. I closed my eyes and listened to the car idle. If I took a left, I was going home. To the right was the Pacific.
I rammed the stick forward and floored the pedal. The engine hauled like an unleashed racehorse. I drove a day and a bit, stopping only to get gas. Then I saw before me the glittering expanse of the ocean. This was a pivotal moment in my life.
I left the car and strolled to the beach. Savoring the occasion, I sat down, took off my shoes and socks, and stuck my feet into the sand. It felt the stored-up heat of the day caressing my toes. I blinked into the sun. I was where I wanted to be. My father’s voice in my head fell silent some time before I crossed into California. Only I would decide what was next.
Copyright © 2025 by Olaf Baumann
