The Klaatu Terminus (3 page)

Kosh looked up at the cloudless sky.

“I see things when I’m riding sometimes,” Kosh said. “Especially at night. But it usually turns out to be something ordinary, like a puff of smoke, or a wisp of fog.”

“Greta says I was born with an overactive imagination.”

“I think, to Greta, any imagination at all is overactive.”

Emily laughed again, a deeper, more natural sound, and gave Kosh a loose-knuckled punch to the shoulder. “I suppose Adrian told you to look out for me,” she said. “Make sure I don’t get in trouble.”

“He said I should take you to a movie sometime.” They started toward the parking lot. “Or shopping. We could drive to the Mall of America, up in the cities.”

“Hmph. While he’s gallivanting all over Israel looking for Noah’s Ark or whatever, I get to go to the megamall with a teenager.”

“It’s better than staying in Hopewell twenty-four–seven. Besides, you’re a teenager yourself.”

“I’ll be twenty soon.”

“You’re nineteen today.”

Emily grinned and bumped him with her shoulder. “I suppose you think I’m too young to be engaged.”

“I don’t think anything like that,” said Kosh.

“Yeah, right.”

When they reached Kosh’s pickup truck, an aging Ford F-150, Kosh opened the door for her. Being charged by his brother to care for Emily during his absence had stirred up a courtly impulse. Emily gave him a quizzical smile. Kosh grinned and shrugged.

“Thank you, kind sir,” said Emily.

As Kosh walked around the truck, Emily reached over and unlocked his door. He climbed in, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot. Emily was staring out the window, lost in her private thoughts.

“Do you think he’ll change?” Kosh asked.

Emily blinked and licked her lips. “What?”

“Do you think going to Jerusalem and all that will make him even more religious?”

“Adrian?” She shook her head. “How could he possibly be more religious? Besides, people are who they are. Nobody changes, not really.”

“I do,” said Kosh. “I change all the time.”

Emily once again fell silent. After a few miles had passed, she spoke.

“You know, you don’t have to babysit me, Curtis.”

“Kosh.”

“Kosh . . . why do you want people to call you Kosh?”

“I just like it.” Kosh was embarrassed to tell her he had stolen the name from a character on a TV show.

“Well, I think it’s silly. I’ll call you Koshy-poo.”

“Please don’t,” Kosh growled.

Emily laughed.

“So what about that movie?” Kosh asked, to change the subject.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie,” Emily said, “but all that’s showing nearby is that new Jurassic Park movie. I don’t want to watch a show about people killing dinosaurs.”

“
Starship Troopers
opens in a couple months,” Kosh said.

“What’s that about?”

“People killing aliens.”

Emily made a face.

“We could drive up to Rochester,” Kosh said. “See anything we want at the multiplex.”

“I hear they’re making a movie about the
Titanic
.”

“That’s crazy,” Kosh said. “Who’d want to watch a boat sink for two hours?”

K
OSH DID NOT MISS
A
DRIAN
. N
OT AT FIRST
.
At first, it was as if nothing had changed. Kosh spent his days working on his bike, riding it when it didn’t need fixing, or working at Red’s Roost, flipping burgers and frying potatoes. He also had the garden to tend. That spring he had planted nearly a quarter acre of vegetables, everything from asparagus to zucchini. It was more than he could ever eat himself, but he would sell some to Red, and maybe give the rest to his neighbors. It kept him busy.

He kept meaning to give Emily a call. See how she was doing. But the thought of picking up the phone made him nervous. He was afraid that she would be dismissive, or treat him like a kid, like her fiancé’s little brother:
Aww, that’s so sweet of you to call, Koshy-poo.
Maybe he’d run into her in town someday.

Ronnie Becker provided other distractions.

Kosh had been getting in trouble with Ronnie ever since they had, at age ten, taken Ronnie’s dad’s tractor on a joyride through the Jensen’s soybean field, with the tiller still attached to the back. Rory Jensen claimed they had destroyed five hundred dollars’ worth of crop. Adrian, who had recently become Kosh’s legal guardian, had paid Rory two hundred and fifty dollars without arguing. Ronnie’s old man thought Rory Jensen’s estimate was a bit high, and refused to pay. The Beckers and the Jensens had not gotten along so good after that.

Curtis, as he was then known, was only mildly embarrassed by his misdeed. His father had died only a few months before, and he figured the world could cut him some slack.

Ronnie Becker was his best friend, so Kosh wished he liked him better. It was a small community, however, and there were only a handful of guys his age. He could always count on Ronnie to come to him with some harebrained scheme. It was always interesting, at least.

Most recently, Ronnie had decided to become a drug dealer. He’d found a patch of “ditchweed” — marijuana plants that grew wild in the area, but had no kick — and was drying a few pounds of it in an unused shed behind his parents’ barn. His plan was to package the worthless weed and sell it to college students.

As usual, once Ronnie got a bug up his butt, he was unstoppable. One day, as Kosh was mowing the lawn, Ronnie rolled up on his Honda.

“Road trip!” Ronnie yelled.

Kosh turned off the mower. “Road trip to where?”

“Kato.”

“Mankato?” Mankato was about a hundred miles west of Hopewell. “Why?”

Ronnie slapped the backpack strapped to the back of his bike. “I got fifty ounces of high-quality weed to move.”

“More like
low-
quality
ditch
weed,” Kosh said.

Ronnie grinned and shrugged. “As far as those college boys know, it’s top-quality bud. They’ll probably actually catch a buzz off it. Come on, ride out with me.”

If Adrian had been home, he might have stepped out of the house right about then, taken one look at Ronnie, and said, “Don’t forget you have to work tonight, Curtis.”

“I gotta work tonight,” Kosh said, channeling his absent brother.

“Come on! We’ll be back by four. Tell you what, I’ll buy you a burger in Kato.”

Kosh thought about the thousands of burgers he’d flipped over the past year at Red’s Roost.

“No burgers for me,” he said.

“A steak then. Whatever. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Fun
, coming from Ronnie Becker, was a rather dubious proposition.

“I got a lot of stuff to do,” Kosh said.

“Like what? Hoe the garden? Gimme a break, dude. Break out the wheels and let’s go. This is a riding day if ever I saw one.”

Ronnie was right. Clear blue sky, gentle breeze, seventy degrees. Kosh imagined himself on the road. He had just tuned his bike. He had a full tank. And if they didn’t spend too long in Mankato, he could be back before his five o’clock shift at the Roost.

“Let me get my jacket,” he said.

They took the back roads to Mankato, through rolling farmland dimpled with lakes and tufted with patches of woodland. Kosh quickly forgot his qualms and enjoyed the feel of wind sliding over his gloved knuckles, inflating the sleeves of his leather jacket, scouring his cheeks. Usually, Kosh and Ronnie pushed their bikes hard, thriving on the speed and danger, but Ronnie’s backpack full of weed made them uncharacteristically cautious.

Ten miles east of Mankato, Ronnie pulled into a roadside rest area. Kosh followed. Ronnie got off his bike and pulled two cans of Leinenkugel’s out of his pack. “Beer break,” he said, and tossed a can to Kosh.

The last thing Kosh wanted was a beer. It wasn’t even noon yet, and they had a long ride home ahead of them. But he didn’t want to look like a wuss. He thumbed the pop-top open. A jet of foam shot out, soaking his sleeve.

Ronnie laughed and carefully opened his own can.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

Kosh tasted the beer. Warm. Bitter. He wished he had a Coke.

“How are you planning to find customers for your stuff?” Kosh asked, gesturing at the backpack.

“I got this guy says he’s got connections with all the frats. Piece of cake.” Ronnie poured half his beer down his throat and belched. “Course, it’s gonna have to be a one-time deal. Once they smoke a few bowls of my product, they won’t be giving me any repeat business.”

“So when do I get that steak?”

“Anytime you want, bro.”

Kosh sipped his beer, grateful that most of it had foamed out when he opened it.

“How about we eat as soon as we get to Kato. That way if you get busted, I still get lunch.”

“Deal.” Ronnie drained the rest of his beer, crumpled the can, and threw it in the direction of a trash bin. Kosh took another sip of warm beer, walked over to the can Ronnie had tossed, picked it up, and deposited both cans in the trash.

Ronnie was already pulling out of the rest stop. Kosh hopped on his bike, wondering as he did why he would follow Ronnie Becker anywhere.

On the outskirts of Mankato, they pulled into a crowded parking lot.

“Still hungry?” Ronnie asked, taking off his helmet.

Kosh looked skeptically at the sign above the small building:
BURGER BOB’S
.

“What about that steak?” he said.

“I heard this place is good. Maybe they have a steakburger.”

Inside, Burger Bob’s was similar to Red’s Roost: a long bar along one wall, a row of vinyl-upholstered booths on the opposite wall, and a scattering of tables between. There was no pool table, though, and it was busier than the Roost — nearly every seat was filled.

Kosh and Ronnie took an empty booth back by the restrooms. A chalkboard menu mounted on the wall listed about thirty burger variations, from the “Plain Burger,” to “Bob’s Favorite.” The more exotic toppings offered included prosciutto, pickled asparagus, and smoked eel. There were a dozen different types of cheese, including Limburger, the stinkiest of the stinky cheeses.

A waitress appeared at their table and cocked one formidable eyebrow. She reminded Kosh of his third-grade teacher.

Ronnie said, “You sell a lot of smoked eel?”

“Every day,” the waitress deadpanned.

“How about Limburger cheese?”

“That’s for take-out only. What can I get for you?”

“Cheeseburger basket,” Ronnie said. “And a Budweiser.”

The waitress’s left eyebrow climbed another half inch. “Got an ID?”

Ronnie produced a driver’s license. The waitress lifted a pair of reading glasses from the chain around her neck, perched them on her beak, examined the license, and handed it back.

“How about a soda,” she suggested.

Ronnie grinned and pocketed the phony ID. The waitress turned to Kosh.

“I’ll have the goat-cheese-and-arugula burger,” Kosh said. “And a Coke.”

The waitress scribbled on her pad and whooshed off.

Ronnie said, “Goat cheese and arugula?”

Kosh shrugged. He’d never had arugula or goat cheese before, and he was curious.

“I was wondering about something,” Kosh said. “That stuff you got, it’s ditchweed, but it’s still technically marijuana, right? What happens if you get busted?”

“We’re not gonna get busted.”

“Just say you did. They can throw you in jail for lousy pot the same as for the good stuff, right?”

“What’s your point?”

“Why didn’t you just dry some nettles, or alfalfa, or something legal?”

Ronnie looked offended. “That would be dishonest!”

Kosh wasn’t sure if he was kidding.

The goat-cheese-and-arugula burger was like nothing Kosh had ever tasted before. The flavors were on the skunky, funky side, but they were fascinating. He took another bite.

“Well?” Ronnie said.

“I like it,” Kosh said.

“I can smell it from here. Almost as bad as Limburger.”

“I like Limburger,” Kosh said.

“You would. Speaking of reeking, how you liking life without Adrian?”

“I like it all right.” Kosh was trying to figure out which part of what he was tasting was the cheese, and which was the arugula.

“Hard to believe he’s leaving Emily for so long. I bet she hooks up with somebody else. She’s a hottie.”

“They’re
engaged
,” Kosh said, irritated.

“Good-looking girl like that, man, if it was me leaving town I’d worry. You think she’d go out with me? A little summer romance before she shackles herself to Adrian?”

“I don’t think you’re up to her standards.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re kind of a jerk.”

Ronnie put down his burger and stared at Kosh, then broke out laughing.

“You got a point,” he said.

They finished their meal quickly. After the waitress brought their check, Ronnie asked Kosh if he had any money.

“I thought you were buying,” Kosh said.

“I am! As soon as we move that weed, I’m golden. I’m just a little short right now.”

“How much do you have?”

“Okay, I’m a
lot
short. I’ll pay you back as soon as I score some cash.”