LB Sedlacek has had poems and stories appear in a variety of journals and zines. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her latest poetry book is “Unresponsive Sky” published by Purple Unicorn Media. Other poetry books include “Swim,” “The Poet Next Door,” “This Space Available,” and “Words and Bones.” Her latest short stories book is “The Renovator & Motor Addiction” published by Alien Buddha Press. Other fiction books include “The Jackalope Committee and Other Tales,” “The Mailbox of the Kindred Spirit,” and “Four Thieves of Vinegar & Other Short Stories.”  LB also enjoys swimming and reading.

Terrestrial

There are a number of stories of people being injured, and even killed, by meteorites. The most celebrated case was that of Mrs. Hulitt Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama. On the 30 March 1954 Mrs. Hodges was asleep on her sofa when a 3.86 kg stony meteorite crashed though her roof and hit her, causing abdominal injuries which, fortunately, were not serious. The funny thing about the incident – although she probably did not find it amusing at the time – is that Mrs. Hodges lived opposite the Comet Drive-In Theatre….

From the “Lethbridge Herald” 12/23/54*

Mckensie Emerson wouldn’t let go of the PVC pipe, it was strapped to him tight by the six foot rope extending from the pipe platform he had hand tied together using duct tape and more rope.  He wiped his head on his shirt.  Both arms of his orange t-shirt were soaking wet, but with the sun burning from the vast Kansas skies his shirt would be dry before he walked another twenty feet hauling the pipe, rope and everything else.  Mckensie was set up in south Kansas, midway between Wichita and Dodge City right outside of Greensburg where the largest hand dug well was and where a hurricane had come through wiping everything out his one-story white A-frame with a basement included.  He was living out of his truck, a white pick-up inherited from his Father after he’d passed away three years ago. 

            His Father had left him some money too, enough to buy some rights from farmers to go digging and searching on their land.  The farmers got a small fee plus percentages of anything he found.  He agreed to refill any holes he dug, dispose of any junk like beer bottles, buckets, whatever he found plus he had to dig up anything good he found and remove it too. 

            Mckensie and his Father were both from Hays.  His Father had worked at a dairy farm as a supervisor.  He thought he’d follow into dairy too and convinced his Father to put aside some cash to start a farm, but then an unidentified falling object, most likely a meteor, struck outside of Greensburg.  The hunk was about the size of a couple of tennis balls put together and they punched a hole in old man Wheeler’s far right field.  The object was oblong, kind of shaped like a jelly bean.  The local authorities tested it with a Geiger counter for radioactivity, but found nothing.  There was no evidence of scorch or burn marks.  When that made the local news fifteen years ago he’d been hooked, even ditched school because of it but not before attending a few science classes where he’d learned that about twenty to sixty rock like objects fall from the sky every day over the whole planet and that if these objects from the sky turn out to be a meteorites they can be worth thousands of dollars to scientific institutions, researchers but even better yet to collectors who like to put them on display.

            He had a collector after him now, wanted him to find a big rock, big as the palm of a hand or close to that so it would look good in a display box.  The guy had built a special meteorite room with the empty display case in the middle and a spotlight shining from the side.  He’d sent pictures.  Mckensie had one in his back pocket.  A slight buzzing pricked his ears.  He looked down at the screen, it wasn’t junk, pennies, coins of any kind or even a ring.  He had rewired his metal detector to show large metal objects.  He muttered, “Okay, collector, maybe we got something for you today.”

            The quality had to be good for the collectors, had to have the right fusion crust, regmaglypts, iron-nickel metal, density, magnetism.  There were tests to show it, but mostly the non-scientists who bought his stuff just wanted it to be big, something that would look good in a case on display under hot lights in a specially built room to impress guests.  The scientist types who were interested in the rocks seemed to him like they were working at being invisible, very secretive, trying their best to not disclose the location where they were taking their rocks.

            All the secrecy made him think of his big brother and the time they’d gone to a party at someone’s house that his brother knew, somewhere off a dirt road in Hays, in somebody’s basement and how his brother had offered ten bucks to some girl to come over and kiss him laughing all the while about how his little brother Mckensie had never been kissed or attempted to kiss any girl.  He was fourteen.  His brother was eighteen and just about to graduate high school and go into the service.  The girl refused the money but kissed him anyway, he’d always been thankful for that and if he knew her name, had an address, would send her a necklace — one made from the meteorites — to thank her for her pity on a shy boy.

            Mckensie was still shy unless he was talking about meteorites.  He dropped to his knees looking up at the farmhouse.  There was no movement.  He grabbed a shovel off his ATV and started digging.  He had a watermelon size hole dug by the time the Price’s dog came wandering up sniffing at his meteor detector and him and then looking into the hole like there’d be something in there that he’d left.  “Go on home now, Rip.  They’ll be looking for you when they get back.”  The Price’s rented him the fields in the off season.  The harvest was over for the year, but it would get cold soon and it was harder to search and dig when the ground got hard or covered in frost.  The dog licked at his ankles.  Rip only walked on three legs, the fourth one dangling from some tractor accident where his toes had been run over.  The vet had started to amputate it but had been able to save it.  Mr. Price found it humorous once Rip started running around again on three legs.  Price had laughed about it the whole time while he was telling him what happened muttering something about you always hear about three legged dogs and everybody always seems to have a three legged dog story so when it happens to you and your dog you start to wonder.

            Rip sniffed at the hole again, heard something his ears pricking up and he bounded down the center of the field.  In the sunlight, he became a black speck running because the light was so bright, white even, and he was brown or black or a combination of both.  Mckensie pulled a bandana from his pocket, wiped his head and stuffed it back into his shorts.  He missed Wichita mostly at lunchtime and the smells of pizza places, sub shops, Chinese food and heavy traffic.  He’d have to make his own lunch from the grub he had packed in his truck.

            When he ate, if people didn’t know him sometimes they’d stare because he’d put so much away and it wasn’t because of the quantity of the food but because he was thin and tall even with eating so much.  Marching through the fields pulling three hundred pounds or so of weight when the ATV couldn’t pull it and him or got stuck in the mud, kept the calories off.  The sunlight and fresh air kept him hungry and eating.  The other thing people stared at him for was his shock of bright red hair, blue eyes and unusual tanned skin, also from hunting meteorites all day in the sun.  He slathered on plenty of sunscreen, bought it a case at a time when he went into Wichita to one of those buying clubs.  At first when he started the hunt, he’d stayed pale but eventually his skin gave in and started turning tan.  He got up early trudging the fields from sunrise to sunset.

            It took an hour, then another and then three more.  Before sundown and the dark and stars hit he and Rip had made another discovery together.  Mckensie took some photos with his cell.

            The find was glorious and the cell phone graphics didn’t do it justice.  It was a full slice, a Glorieta Pallasite, 75 grams, half siderite and half pallasite, and an etched pattern of mantel and nickel-iron core from the meteor it came from, a spectacular find. 

Mckensie knew the perfect place to meet the collector.  He set up a meet in Las Vegas, the little Las Vegas, the one in the state of New Mexico. 

Las Vegas, New Mexico was close enough to the Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado borders and only a thirty minute drive through Oklahoma to Kansas just outside of Dodge City, an old western town now home to movie sets, tour groups, and rich folks.

            There wasn’t much to hunt in Las Vegas but once in awhile he’d heard of a hunter coming across rocks with desert varnish, shiny and black from microbial activity.  New falls would have a fusion crust, thin from when the outer surface melted from passing through the Earth’s atmosphere.  To the naked eye, it looked like eggshells.  After years on Earth, the rocks would turn a rusty brown and eventually disappear.

            Mckensie stood on the overpass that served as a small bridge over the arroyo.  He looked down at the cuts in the bank where a river or water would flow if there was any.  A few picnic tables were scattered on the banks.  He shrugged his shoulders and scuffed his shoes.  The shoes were new, white and stood out bright against the dry and the brown dirt dust in the air.

            He looked up at the park in the square.  A couple of kids were riding on skateboards, a few more on bicycles.  The trees, grass were green the only bit of color in the downtown.  He checked his watch.  He thought about going up to get a bite at the old La Castaneda Hotel.  He leaned against the wall, looked up at the sky, closed his eyes.  After a couple of minutes his solitude was broken by a scratchy voice.

            Mckensie opened his eyes, squinted, closed them and opened them again.  “You’re still here?”

            “Yep.  You’re not imagining it.  Did you stop at the La Castaneda before you walked down the hill?”

            Mckensie nodded.  “Nope.  Thought about it.  This sun is brutal.”

            “Yep.”

            Mckensie stared at the man.  He stood a foot taller and was probably fifty pounds heavier than he was.  His hair and eyes were dark.  He wore a faded blue t-shirt, jeans, and Birkenstocks.

            “You’re Marlan?”

            “Yep.”  Marlan stuck out his hand.  Mckensie grasped it.  Marlan’s handshake was firm, his hand sweaty.

            “Marlan and Mckensie.  We sound like we should take our act on the road or something.”

            “Something.”  Marlan glanced back up at the hotel.  “You staying at the hotel?”

            Mckensie shook his head.  “Not that one.  But it’s not in the room anyway.”

            “You got it with you?”

            Mckensie nodded and pointed to one of the picnic tables off the bank by the arroyo.  “Let’s walk.”

            The picnic tables were deserted, the arroyo still.  They sat at the table closest to the cluster of Privet trees.

            “You got a slice?”

            Mckensie eyed the young man.  He looked much like him too except for the weight and mess of uncut hair that fell into his eyes his hands darting across his face to push the wayward strands out of the way every few seconds.

            Mckensie reached into his back pocket retrieving a handkerchief.  He laid it out flat on the table.  “I found almost three pounds of it.  There may be more.  I’m still working on the composition.  It’s a clean find.  I own the rights to the field.”

            “Is that what we’re doing out here in New Mexico?  I thought this might be a find from Portales Valley.”

            “Nah.  That find’s all been found as far as I know.  It’s a cutthroat business.  Better to let the competition guess at where you find what you find.  You know everybody’s kicking to get into a find, locate rocks and sell them to the highest bidders.  You’re gonna keep some and resale the rest, right?”

            Marlan shook his head.  “Who says I’m buying?”

            “Huge demand.  Small finds.  You check out that slice.  You’ll have enough for your display case and some left to trade with the museums or sell to private collectors.”

            Marlan flipped the rock chip over in his hands feeling the rock with his fingertips.  “It’s smooth; it’s got the cavities, the depressions.  I can see the metal.”

            “It’s about three and half as heavy as an Earth rock of the same size.”

            “Yeah.”  Marlan sighed, wiped his hair out of his eyes again, dipped his free from hair swiping hand into his pocket and pulled out a magnet with a picture of Santa Fe and “Land of Enchantment” scribbled across it in green letters.  He held up the slice in one hand, the magnet in the other.  They clicked together as if they belonged.

            “No magnetite or hematite?”

            “See for yourself.” 

Mckensie pulled out another handkerchief laying a  broken piece of white ceramic tile on the table.  He flipped it over to the unglazed side.  Marlan grabbed the tile and the slice moving it faster and faster across the surface.  Mckensie shook his head and laughed stretching his legs out.  Marlan looked up at him and rolled his eyes. 

“You enjoying yourself?”

“Yep.”

“There’s no streak.”

“Nope.”

“It’s real.”

“Yep.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Yep.”

“Here’s the address.”  Marlan stuck a business card out in the air.          

“You want to know how much?”

Marlan shook his head.  “Nope.”

“You’ll wire the payment?”

“Every bit of it.”

“The slice is yours to keep.  Nice doing business with you, Marlan.”

“Same here.  Be sure to check out the La Castaneda.  There’s nothing like it.”

Mckensie shook his head and grinned.  “I bet not.” 

Mckensie stood and held out his hand for the second time.  Marlan shook his hand returning the grin.  “Let me know what else you find out there.”

“You got it.”  Mckensie returned the tile to his pocket and took a deep breath.  The trip out west had been worth it, he thought.  He thought some more as he started the climb towards the bar in the old hotel.  He peeked in the bookstore wondering if they had a good rocks and minerals section.  He eyed the drugstore with its old-timey lunch counter thinking he could substitute a chocolate malt for a beer instead of continuing the steep climb.  He grinned at some kids playing hacky sack in the town square park.

The ground became level about a half block from the old hotel.  His truck was parked outside, his meteor hunter safe in storage in Kansas.

He hadn’t seen the man taking pictures, or the one that followed him into the hotel.  He hadn’t noticed the man that sat beside him at the bar.  He’d forgotten the tile in his pocket, his thoughts on the design for the new meteor hunter he was going to build.

Author’s Note:

• There have been many variations on the spelling of Mrs. Hodges name and/or her first name.