Channel Blue (16 page)

Perry parked his car and walked down the street, holding the jar containing the fly in one hand and a wad of twenty-dollar bills in the other. He passed boarded-up homes and stripped-down cars. Normally, he would have ventured through a neighbourhood like this with great trepidation. Today, he felt fearless. After all, he was here to help.

He walked for an entire block and still couldn’t find anyone to give his money to. Then he came upon a small girl pushing a rusty tricycle through a front garden covered with weeds. She wore a dirty white dress clearly too small for her, but as far as Perry was concerned, she was perfect. She was poor.

‘Hello, little girl,’ Perry said. ‘This is for you.’ He peeled off two twenties and offered them to the girl, who hesitated. She eyed Perry and the bills suspiciously.

‘Go ahead,’ Perry said. After a moment, she reached out and took the bills. She held them in her hands, gazing at them, her awe tinged with disbelief. A breathtaking smile broke out on her small face. Perry smiled back. ‘What are you going to do with that money?’

She blinked at the two bills. ‘Take Grandma and Grandpa to dinner,’ she said softly.

Perry held the fly jar out towards the girl. This was good stuff.

‘What the fuck?’

Perry turned to see four teenagers walking down the sidewalk towards him. They were large, but their clothes were even larger. In fact, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the boys were wearing the clothes or the clothes were wearing the boys. One teen stepped into Perry’s face.

‘Whaddaya doing, freak?’ He turned to the little girl, ‘What’s he doing to you?’

‘He gave me money,’ she said.

‘He did
what
?’ the teen said.

Perry suddenly realised how ridiculous and possibly sinister he appeared: a dishevelled white man in a blue velour tracksuit giving cash to a child.

‘Do you need some money?’ he asked the teens. ‘You see, I’m just trying to help out a little. We could all use some help, right?’ He extended a shaking hand filled with cash. The four teens laughed in short, barking breaths, then set upon Perry. The glass jar slipped from his hand and crashed to the sidewalk.

Since Perry was busy being beaten, he didn’t see what happened to the fly inside the jar and assumed it was gone. But the fly hadn’t flown far. It had found a perch on the top of a nearby parking sign, next to a row of other flies – the perfect vantage point, it turned out, from which to watch Perry Bunt demonstrate the basic goodness of the Earth’s people.

CHANNEL 16

MAN ON A MISSION

‘Per? Per? You OK?’ The words seemed to come from a hundred miles away. Perry opened his eyes and saw his neighbour Noah Overton standing over him. Noah appeared relieved. ‘Jesus. What happened to you?’

Perry was lying on the sidewalk next to the overgrown garden, surrounded by shards of broken glass. All of his money was gone. He had a crushing headache and what felt like bruises all over his body. He slowly sat up and felt his face to see if it was all still there. It was.

He told Noah about the confrontation with the teenagers. ‘I must have blacked out when I hit the pavement,’ he said.

Noah’s large brown eyes welled with concern. ‘What were you doing over here in the first place?’

How could Perry begin to explain his last-ditch attempt to show aliens that the Earth’s residents were worth saving? As Noah helped him to his feet, he heard a buzzing sound. He assumed this was a side-effect of the concussion until he saw a swarm of flies above him. ‘Weird, huh?’ Noah said. ‘Never seen that many flies. As if they don’t have enough problems around here.’

Perry smiled slowly.
They were watching. Goddammit – they were really watching!
And the longer he could keep them watching, the better the chances of postponing the finale. He turned to Noah Overton. All the features that Perry had come to disdain in Noah’s face – the innocent doe-like eyes, the pert superior nose, the down-turned smug mouth, the pubic half-beard, the shaggy, artfully messed-up hair – now seemed brilliant to Perry. Better than brilliant.

‘I know I haven’t been the best neighbour,’ Perry said. ‘But I want to change.’

Noah furrowed his brow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve decided that you’re right. We have to save the planet.’

‘That’s great,’ Noah said, a little uncertainly.

‘And
you
are the perfect person to help me do it,’ Perry said, angling his face up towards a nearby hovering fly. ‘You are a good person. You’re unselfish – compassionate – you’re always looking for ways to help other people. Isn’t that true?’

Noah regarded Perry warily. ‘I’d better take you to the hospital. You should get checked out.’

‘I’ve never given you any credit, but you
really care
. And you’re trying, really trying to make a difference.’

‘Seriously, Per – you might have some brain damage or something.’

‘You just saved my life.’

‘I just drove around the corner and saw you lying here. Anyone would’ve stopped.’

Perry turned to the white van parked at the curb with its safety flashers on. On its side was written:
DAILY
BLESSING
MEAL
DELIVERY
. Perry smiled triumphantly. ‘You were delivering meals to the hungry!’

‘Shut-ins and seniors, mostly,’ Noah said. ‘I was just on my way back to the church to pick up more.’

‘Let’s go then!’ said Perry. ‘Let’s go help people! Because that’s what we do here on Earth all the time, right? We help people.’

Noah hesitated. ‘Are you mocking me?’

‘No, no,’ Perry said. ‘God, no. Why would I do that? You’re such a good person.’ Noah gave Perry a long look, then led him to the van.

The two men drove through sun-baked rows of decrepit bungalows to the Church of St Jude, which towered over the clapboard hovels with its gothic spires and, at the tip of its centre tower, a large cross bordered with neon tubing. This cross provided a beacon, though probably not the one its builders had in mind: Disoriented drivers trying to find their way back to nicer neighbourhoods learned that they only needed to drive away from the cross.

Perry, sitting in the passenger seat, interviewed Noah exhaustively on all the organisations he worked for and the just causes he believed in until Noah interrupted. ‘Man, what’s with all these flies?’ He picked up a street atlas and swatted at a fly on the dashboard.

Perry gasped and yanked the atlas out of Noah’s hand. ‘Don’t do that. The flies are good. You have to trust me on this.’

Noah shook his head. ‘Per, I feel like you’re going through something really heavy right now. You want to talk about it?’

‘I want to talk about
you
and all the work you’ve done for this planet.’

Noah sighed. ‘Look, it’s OK. I’ve done counselling at rehab centres.’ He glanced meaningfully over at Perry. ‘I’m serious. You can tell me what you’re on.’

They pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the church. While Perry was interested in helping Noah load more dinner trays into the van, Noah thought Perry’s enthusiasm might be put to better use as a volunteer at the shelter and directed him across the parking lot.

The shelter for displaced persons at St Jude’s occupied the basement of a block-like annexe that was built onto the side of the hundred-year-old sanctuary in the 1970s in an ecclesiastical splurge of cement and stucco. Perry followed a ramp down the side of the building and pulled open a heavy metal door. The first thing that hit him was the smell, an odd combination of cleaning solvents, body odour and human filth. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw a large, drab, windowless room filled with benches and mostly inert bodies, some sitting up at tables over metal trays of shapeless food, others lying down on the floor next to shopping trolleys full of what appeared to be garbage. One side of the room opened onto a kitchen, where volunteers stood at a steam table serving food to a long line that shuffled slowly by. At a nearby table, a group of leathery men, dressed as if they had walked by an exploding thrift shop, gazed at Perry standing in the doorway, a blank stare from dull eyes. The room was a violent, mocking contrast to the sunny afternoon outside.

Perry couldn’t help but smile. This is the perfect place, he thought. They’ll see Earthles helping other Earthles. If this doesn’t make them realise what good people we are, nothing will.

‘Shut the damn door!’ a large man wearing a ski cap yelled from a bench.

Perry hesitated, unsure if the man was yelling at him.

‘The flies, man! You’re letting in flies!’ The man was right: to Perry’s great joy, flies were zipping around him through the doorway. He shut the door, but slowly.

After asking the servers at the steam table, Perry located the volunteer coordinator, Father Michael, a handsome young priest wearing a short-sleeve tunic and carrying a clipboard. It was Father Michael who had expanded the meals-on-wheels programme into a fully-fledged soup kitchen. While the other priests at St Jude’s were initially dubious about Father Michael’s enthusiasm for helping the poor, it had paid great dividends for the parish. While membership at other churches had dwindled in recent years, overall attendance at St Jude’s had actually risen as the homeless filled masses after breakfast and before dinner.

‘Excuse me, Father.’ Perry navigated across the busy dining area and approached the young priest. ‘Noah Overton said I should talk to you. I’d like to help.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the priest said. ‘We don’t start volunteers on Thursdays. Come back on a Monday or a Wednesday.’

Father Michael clearly considered their discussion over, but Perry continued standing in his path. ‘I really want to help and I’m here today.’

The priest shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, I’m extremely busy right now – I’m literally going out of my mind.’ While Perry fought the urge to offer the priest an exorcism, Father Michael said, ‘You’ll have to come back’ and slipped through a door marked ‘Staff Only’. Above the door was a TV mounted on brackets. The sound was off but Perry saw a sombre news anchorman and the words:

SPECIAL REPORT – CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Perry fought the urge to panic and desperately surveyed the room around him. He noticed a muscle-bound man with a buzz cut mopping the floor.

‘Excuse me,’ Perry said. ‘If there’s some other work in the shelter you need to do, I can take over here.’

The man eyed Perry suspiciously, then continued mopping. Perry noticed several flies landing on a nearby table. ‘You must really care about people,’ Perry said to the man.

‘What?’ the man said.

‘You’re a volunteer, right?’

The man chuckled derisively. ‘I busted some guy in the face,’ he said. ‘I was either down for assault or community service.’

‘Oh,’ Perry said. ‘But you are still here helping, aren’t you?’

The man glared at Perry. ‘You queer or something?’

‘Uh, no,’ Perry stammered. Sweat sprang out of his forehead. ‘I just wanted to point out that it doesn’t matter why you’re here... you’re still doing a good thing... making that floor so... shiny and... bright.’

The man brandished the mop like a club, waving it in Perry’s face. ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ he snarled. Perry jumped back and quickly made a wide arc around the man towards the main entrance. Here he fixed on an old woman, gnarled and leathery, attempting to push a shopping cart loaded with bags through the metal door. One of the cart’s cracked wheels had become caught on the threshold. Perry rushed to her assistance.

‘Let me help you with that,’ he said. He took hold of one end of the rusty cart in order to pull it through the door.

‘Don’t touch my cart,’ the old woman said.

‘I’m just going to help you get it through the doorway.’ Perry gently tugged at the cart.

‘
Nooooo
!’ The old woman yanked the cart away from Perry with all her strength, slamming it backwards into the doorjamb and causing it to topple over onto one side, sending myriad shopping bags onto the floor of St Jude’s Shelter for the Displaced.

* * *

Amanda carried the container holding all her Earthly possessions down the hallway towards the elevators, closely followed by two security guards. While passing a screening room, she heard hysterical gales of laughter and poked her head in the doorway. Dennis the receptionist and an associate producer rocked convulsively in their seats. On the screen, Perry Bunt ran around a dark room chased by an angry old woman. The old woman, amazingly fast for her size and age, was occasionally able to lunge at Perry and deftly pummel him with her fists. Encircling this chase were rowdy homeless men and women, cheering on the spry senior.

‘What’s going on?’ Amanda asked.

‘Hey, Amanda.’ Dennis gasped for air and wiped tears from his eyes. ‘They were going through the selects this morning and came upon that Earthle we brought in here. Remember? The one who had a show for five minutes?’ Amanda nodded her head, watching as Perry slipped on a food tray and fell to the floor of the shelter. Dennis paused to chortle ecstatically, then continued. ‘He’s totally hilarious. He thinks he can stop the finale by showing us that Earthles are basically good, but—’ Dennis fought back another fit of laughter. ‘But the more he tries to do it, the more abused he gets!’

Months later, when Amanda would think back to the last days of Channel Blue, she would often ask herself when she first felt what might be called love for Perry Bunt. This is the moment she often came to: seeing Perry on his lost humiliating crusade, running at full speed from a crazy old lady. It made no sense to her in the moment or even later, but there it was. She wasn’t coming down with a case of Satanism. She wasn’t going crazy. She simply cared deeply about the fate of an Earthle risking everything to save his planet. And like every great producer of entertainment, she had the audacity to think that other people would, too.

‘How long have we been tracking this feed?’ she asked the associate producer.

‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘A technician sent it to me a few minutes ago.’

‘Are you going live to air?’