The lights were brighter now. They were faint in the northern sky a few moments ago when Daniel climbed into the truck. He was sleeping soundly when Roger's insistent knocking urged him out of bed. In the first irrational thoughts of half-awake Daniel thought the house must be on fire. No, it was those strange lights again. Night after night they had been flittering around the skies outside of Eagle Bluff. Now Roger was roaring down a back country gravel road at sixty miles an hour, and the lights were ahead, always just ahead. They hung low in the sky, and then suddenly ascended, faster than anything Daniel had ever seen. Then they flashed to the right, hung suspended, and took off far down the road. Wondering where he was, Daniel rubbed his face, his eyes never leaving the sky. Thankfully, he'd remembered to grab the camera in their mad dash for the truck.
"Hang on, Daniel." Roger's round, Irish face strained with exertion. "I'm going to turn off the road. There's a lane around here. Hold on, this is going to be bumpy. Can you still see them?" He swung the truck sharply to the right.
Daniel swayed from side to side and clutched a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The bouncing of the pickup made it impossible to hold the binoculars still for very long.
"Slow down, Roger!" he yelled.
Roger jerked the wheel again and Daniel was thrown against the door. "Will you slow down? There's mud all over the windshield. Put your wipers on." Daniel rubbed his arm where it had hit the door handle. He sat up straight and craned forward, trying to see up through the front windshield. The four-wheeler bounced over the ruts; the front bumper churned up the mud. This was a very wild roller coaster ride.
"Don't you have shocks on this thing?" he cried above the straining motor.
"What?"
"Shocks, I said shocks! Don't you have shocks on this truck?"
"Man, you can't have everything," Roger said as he fought to keep the four-wheeler on the road.
"Wait, wait," Daniel said. "There they are again. They were gone, but now I see them again. There! Over there! Heading towards the trees!"
Roger jammed on the brakes. The pickup skidded sideways, biting into the curve. Then, in a spray of dirt and gravel, it skidded to a stop. Daniel was thrown forward. His hands flew out to keep him from slamming into the dashboard. "Holy cats, Roger, you're frothing at the mouth. Take it easy."
Roger shut off the engine; it was quiet inside now. They were both out of breath. "Daniel, we're going to have to walk through this field. Those lights went down in those trees over there."
"Okay, I'll try to walk it, but, I don't know, maybe you should go alone."
"You don't want to miss this, do you? Come on, Daniel. We've come this far. Those lights are close. I've got to see what they are -- what they might be attached to."
"Attached to? I think you're crazy." But his own excitement won over his hesitation to walk on uneven, wet ground with his weak legs. He'd brought his cane, but that wasn't going to help much. He was going to have to rely heavily on his friend.
"Well -- " He looked at the spot where the lights had gone. "I do see something kind of flashing up ahead in the woods. I'll try to go with you as far as I can, but when it gets too tough for me, I'm packing it in."
"Fair enough, Daniel, my boy!"
"Turn on the dome light." Daniel pulled his single-lens reflex camera from its storage box under the seat. He reached for the door handle.
"How are you going to get pictures?" Roger asked. "There's not enough light out here tonight."
"I'm not going to take the pictures. You are. You've got a steadier hand than I. I've got a fast lens on this thing, and it's loaded with 1600 ASA slide film. If it can't get a picture, nothing can." Daniel took off the lens cap. He opened the lens and set the shutter speed. Then he cocked the shutter. "Here, take it. Hold it real steady when you shoot, or else we'll get fuzz balls for lights." Daniel showed Roger the shutter button, then handed him the camera.
Roger popped open the door and dived from the vehicle into the grass. Nothing hurt Roger; he was built like a tank. He bounced up again on the other side of the pickup, grinning and wiping mud off his shirt.
Daniel shook his head and said a quick prayer for the safety of his camera. He allowed himself to descend with some dignity, conditioned from many years of living with the effects of childhood polio. He had to move very carefully, especially in the dark. And especially with his friend, who in a few moments could make him forget that his own body was as fragile as Roger's was robust. Roger was, as always, in a great hurry. Daniel was too, but his body wouldn't cooperate. Nonetheless, the two slogged across the wet field until they reached the edge of the timber. It was slow going for Roger, and Daniel gamely tried to keep up. He looked into the sky again, hoping that he wouldn't stumble.
"The lights -- they aren't there anymore; they aren't anywhere. They're gone." Daniel stopped suddenly. His side was beginning to hurt. The lights, so vivid moments before, seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
Roger, who was busy sending the flashlight beam dancing off ditchweed and soybean rows, peered up above the tree-line. "You're right, they're gone."
"Look, Rog, maybe we'd better go on back to the truck before I reach the point of no return. I honestly don't know where I am. Do you?"
"Yeah. We're okay, I'm not lost," he answered disappointedly. When Roger went after something, anything, he didn't like to quit. He stood a moment, scowling, watching, apparently hoping for the lights to come back, to tease the two men as they had for the past forty-five minutes.
"There's probably a bunch of people out along these roads tonight doing the same crazy thing," Daniel said. He, too, was disappointed. He had hoped that by now someone would have figured out what the lights were. And the local police had come up empty-handed, just like everyone else.
Reluctantly and with great care, Daniel turned and headed back towards the vehicle. He glanced over his shoulder frequently as he walked, hoping they would see the lights one more time. He could barely see the four-wheeler up ahead under the light of the now hazy moon. The crickets were in full chorus. The dew-covered weeds were slick underfoot.
Daniel turned to Roger and started to laugh. "Let me take your arm, you big gorilla, before I fall down and break both my legs. Do you think you can find your way back to town?"
"Hey, in my courting days I used to take my wife down some of these lanes for a little, you know, privacy."
"Yeah, and then you'd conveniently run out of gas."
"How do you think I charmed the sweet woman into marrying me?"
"Well, Julia ought to come out UFO hunting with you. She'd probably ask for a divorce."
"You got a problem with my driving?" Roger held Daniel in a firm but sturdy grip.
"You are a maniac, Kennedy," Daniel chuckled.
"That's what my lovely Julia always says, too."
"I wonder what those lights are. They move way too fast for aircraft lights."
"It's a real mystery, isn't it?" They were nearing Roger's mud-caked vehicle. "Who's paying for my car wash, by the way?"
"You are. Who dragged me from my comfortable bed at one o'clock in the morning to go on this mad chase?"
"And a fine chase it was, laddy, while it lasted. But don't worry. I'll get us home, if I don't get us stuck out here."
"You better get us home in record time; some of us have to work in the morning. Some of us don't stay up half the night watching the skies for lights every night, either."
"Don't worry, I'll be at the store bright and early." Roger started the motor and slowly began to back down the rutted lane. "You want me to call you and get you up?"
"Please don't. I have a good alarm."
"We'll have to try again the next night we see the lights. What do you say? You game to give it another shot?"
"Sure. If I survived this attempt, I can survive another. But let's wait until my bruises heal. And let's shoot for a weekend, can we? That is, if we ever see these lights again."
"Weekends don't work out so good. I've got to spend those with Julia and the kids." Roger looked in his rearview mirror as he expertly backed up the truck over the rutted road.
On the drive home Daniel was silent. The lights had been too close. So close, that at moments he felt he could touch them. But they were like rainbows: right there, but not there at all. Not airplane lights, not helicopter lights. He'd seen those plenty of times. These were something else altogether. These he could not get out of his head. He smiled. Maybe next time they could do their light chasing on a blacktop road -- a smooth, easy blacktop. It was worth it, but only with Roger along. Roger, the maniac, would keep Daniel safe. But Daniel was bound to be sore in the morning. Sore, and just a little disappointed.
Copyright © 1996 by Dick Claassen and Diane Drury
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