"Not the Usual Crazy"

I WAS A PRISONER in my father's kitchen,

all the walls and windows covered in tinfoil, table buried under antique ham radio equipment.

"Someone has to go check on Dad,"

my brother had said. “He’s not answering his phone or email.”

"Someone"

always meant me.

Dad’s usual conspiracy-theory-crazy

had escalated. He refused to unlock the gate for me when I first drove up and buzzed, but I knew the code. Once I got in, he confiscated my keys. I wouldn't be getting out anytime soon.

“Super top secret,”

he said, ears covered in headphones. He ushered me in with a bright-eyed smile, which made no sense after he'd just taken my keys hostage, and waved me into the Recliner of Doom. Whoever sank into that marvelous chair would be incapacitated by the ennui of pure comfort and lazy bliss. No sedatives necessary. Somehow we always forgot this, and Dad always had to pry us out with a crowbar whenever he was ready for us to leave.

5-minute Free Write Time is up

“Ok Dad.”

I managed, in spite of the recliner's somnambulistic effect, to speak. “I won’t ask who you’re so excited about.”

“Think Arthur Collins.” Dad was still half-smiling. For him to be excited like this, historically, just...well, it never led to good things. "Art Collins and his home-built crystal radio."

I thought. At age fifteen, Collins accidentally or serendipitously made contact with Admiral Perry and the MacMillan expedition. Their German-built radios couldn’t get through to headquarters in DC, but this Iowa boy ended up sending and receiving messages in Morse code throughout the summer of 1925--even though his equipment consisted of a Quaker Oats box, glass towel racks, some wire and a Model T spark coil. In my dad’s eyes, Art Collins was as epic and legendary as a comic book superhero. All Dad’s vintage equipment came from Collins Radio Company.*

“Ok, I’m done thinking about Collins,” I said. “Did you just contact some big, covert expedition, or something?”

“Only the first African in space.”

Dad’s eyes shifted my way, then back to his dials and the bloopy, swoopy noises we had grown up with, Twilight Zone sound effects lulling us into nightmares of UFO sightings and aliens kidnapping our mother.

“Dad. That’s an old internet scam. Another variation on the Nigerian prince.” I managed to keep a sick feeling from rising into my throat.

“Not this one.” Dad tossed me another glance. “This one started before we even had an internet.” He pulled his headset away from one ear and looked me straight in the eye for, like, three seconds. "About the time your mother started whistleblowing, this guy--"

He launched a crazy tale of some rich guy in Africa going up in a space shuttle and never coming home again, because crazy foreign nationals killed his radio, stole his bank account, hijacked his business, and faked his death.

Just like someone had faked Mom’s.

All these years, he would never accept that she could be dead. “She’s alive,” he'd told us even after we saw her coffin lowered into the earth. “I don’t know who or what is in that grave, but it isn’t her.”

They never did allow us to see the body, because dental records identified her, and what was left of her wasn’t fit for anyone’s eyes.

Even if she was in Witness Protection, as Dad hoped, she was dead to us. We'd never see her or hear from her again.

"Dad." I tried to get up, but the recliner held me in its divine grip. How could it make me feel so relaxed when our crazy dad was ready to open some new Pandora's box of conspiracy theories and assassination attempts? This was not his usual crazy. This was a new and crazier than ever kind of crazy.

He didn't even ask what I was about to say. That ticked me off. But not as much as the fact I couldn't remember what I was going to say, anyway. Dad. Dad. Something he'd said made me think he believed Mom and the Afronaut, African astronaut, whatever, were somehow connected.

The noise of Dad’s radios

turned crazier than usual, and I remembered the sonic attack, or acoustic accident, that made those American ambassadors get really sick in Cuba. What if these crazy radio acoustics we'd heard for years were messing up Dad's brain? My head felt weird with all the spacey sounds filling the room.

"The tin foil," I said. "How does it let in shortwave radio but keep out whatever surveillance stuff you worry about?"

Delayed replies were dad's usual m.o. but I just didn't feel patient or indulgent with him now. Not if that Nigerian Prince scam had suckered him in.

He was listening to something in Morse Code. He could hear at a ridiculous speed, while I could only make out ten or twenty words per minute. The di-di-dah-dit sounds came faster than machine gun fire, in a high register that always sounded a little hysterical to me, even on a good day.

His body tensed like a dog who heard a stick break in the woods. “It’s almost here!”

Dad bolted, like that dog chasing the sound in the woods. I followed him out the door. He stood in the yard, looking past the antenna farm to the long, grassy strip he used as a runway for his home-built plane. Not much was visible in the moonless night, but a dark shape blocked the stars, and became larger, and larger. A whisper landed on the ground, sending tremendous vibrations to our feet. I felt sound waves rattling my teeth yet heard almost nothing.

A narrow strip of light widened into a doorway, with a human figure silhouetted in the electric-looking glow. Dad whooped like an Apache and went running.

Two silhouettes hugged and spun each other around, squealing. Another figure loomed in the lit-up doorway.

I took a deep, steadying breath and willed myself to wake up now from this weird dream, but I was more wide awake than ever before in my life. Then I remembered the spare phone I kept in my pocket, knowing Dad would always confiscate my real phone. My brother was on speed dial.

He wasn’t going to believe it any more than I did, but that silhouette was the exact size and shape of our mother.

Call me crazy, but I believed our dad now.

---

Note:
I first read about the Arthur Collins story in "The First 50 Years … A History of Collins Radio Company" by Ken C. Braband, ©1983, Communications Department, Avionics Group, Rockwell International, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

News Item on Havana: Computer scientists may have solved the mystery behind the ‘sonic attacks’ in Cuba

5-Minute Free Write guidelines

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@mariannewest
Day 140: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: First African in Space
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Havanahh image by https://pixabay.com/en/users/AndyLeungHK-4930458/

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