EPPINGTON: THE GUARDED SECRET

my type of gal.
Sam and I were bosom buddies from way back in grade school. She came to my defense at break time when a big kid snatched my ham sandwich right out of my hands and dashed off with it. Never knew if he was just that hungry, but I didn’t care. I burst out crying right where I stood and Sam, who saw the whole thing happen, ran behind the kid, grabbed the back of his shirt and flung him onto the dusty ground. Immediately, the sandwich dropped out of his hand, so both of us lost out. The yard was still quite damp after a drizzle of rain had fallen early that morning, so when Sam scooped up a handful of dirt and tossed it into his face for good measure, I felt totally gratified. Suddenly looking deflated and now screaming like a girl, the weasel got up and ran off towards the swings where Miss Potter, a teacher, was watching her class play.
Sam hurried back over to me. By then, I’d stopped crying and she asked if I was all right.
“Uh-huh,” I replied, wiping my face with both hands.
The beautiful, ebony-skinned girl actually caressed my back a bit; it was probably something she saw her folks do a lot. At that moment, I realized I was looking into the eyes of my hero and we were instant friends from that day forward. I know it’s sort of strange having a girl come to a guy’s rescue, but Sam was no ordinary girl. She was special.
In our town, there’s a vast lake that borders a portion of our neighboring town of Crescent. The guys and I (Sam included) would usually take my Uncle Charlie’s dinghy out there on the shimmering water at least once a week to fish and just to get away from all the “normal”, judgmental folk for a few hours. Uncle Charlie was instrumental in teaching a lot of kids around the neighborhood who had an interest in fishing, how to do it right. He was my dad’s older brother who never took much lip from anybody. Rough, thick-skinned, but had a heart of gold, he never acted up whenever the guys and I wanted to borrow his dinghy. He even owned a collection of canoes which people rented during certain holidays for spirited races across the lake.
The lake was called Olivia—believe it or not! It was named after a girl who’d drowned there ages before we were ever born. The talk was that her dog Ace tried to save her, but unfortunately, was unsuccessful. He did manage to pull her body out of the water though.
We were at Lake Olivia when the four of us noticed the strange, luminous, circular object hovering over our town that day in June. It was hot and sunny, but the object with its numerous miniature lights surrounding the edge of the craft glowed more brightly than anything we’d ever seen before. The steel base, as I call it, rotated slowly as it remained there for what felt like a good five minutes. Then suddenly, we witnessed a ball of light dart out of it, heading downwards like a lightning flash. The craft remained steady thereafter for another minute of two before it bolted towards the east, far into the distance.
“Bloody Mary! Did y’all see that?” Rob exclaimed.
Our jaws were dropped.
“Uh...yeah…” Jase muttered.
“What the hell was that?” Sam asked, still looking up at the sky.
“Seemed like some kind of UFO or something,” I replied.
There were collective nods.
“I don’t believe in UFO’s,” Rob commented.
“I don’t either, dimwit!” Jase barked. “But does that mean we didn’t see something up there that we just admitted we saw?”
“Calm down, guys,” Sam interjected. “Maybe it was something sent by the government to spy on us.” It sounded like she really watched too many of those action movies.
“Whatever it was, surely was huge as hell! Up close, it must be as big as a baseball field,” Rob said.
I felt a bit uneasy about the strange visitor, so much so that I wanted us to call it a day on Olivia, so that I could get back home and tell my folks what we’d seen. If they’d believe me or not was another story, but I just had to tell them.
It didn’t take much convincing at all as the guys all agreed it was time for us to get back. Jase lived alone with his mom. They’d moved to the area from Wisconsin after his dad went to the store for cigarettes one day and never came back. Jase seemed to have had a real chip on his shoulder because of that. I could tell it bothered him every time he mentioned anything about his dad. “Guess that store was in the Twilight Zone,” he once said. “And he couldn’t find his way out.” That probably sounded better to him than saying his dad simply abandoned his family, leaving the two of them to manage on their own.
We rowed across the lake and with a collective effort, pulled the dinghy ashore. Uncle Charlie would collect it later that evening before dark fell, which was the usual routine. We never worried about the boat since we knew it was perfectly safe. Furthermore, Uncle Charlie lived roughly three hundred yards down the road and he could see it by walking right out of his back door.
Eppington was a place where locals were generally trustworthy and didn’t do their neighbors any dirt. I did say generally. I heard about fifty or sixty years earlier, it was actually named ‘Happy Town’ by the presiding governor since it was deemed the most perfect town anyone could possibly be blessed to live in. Crime was always on the low end and our prison compound was only occupied by about five or six inmates at a time. Prison personnel were, in my opinion, paid on slack because it was said that Brevin Forbes who’d been warden for about