The Harvest

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For Devon… the best I can do right now.

And, belatedly, for my parents.

“Tonight,” the President of the United States said, “as we gaze at the sky and wonder at what we see there, our minds are crowded with questions.”

It was an Everest of understatement, Matt Wheeler thought.

He regarded the President’s solemn face as it flickered in the blue aura of the TV screen. The man had aged in office, as presidents often do. Much of that aging, it seemed to Matt, had occurred in the past two weeks.

He turned up the volume and opened the patio doors.

Cool air spilled into the living room. The thermostat kicked over and the baseboard heaters began to warm up. Matt listened to the tick of hot metal in the President’s long pauses.

The air outside was cold, but the night sky had cleared for the first time this rainy March. For the first time, Matt would get his own look at the phenomenon that had been terrifying the rest of the world for most of a week. He’d seen pictures, of course, on the screen of his nineteen-inch Sony. But that was TV. This was his backyard. This was the sky above Buchanan, Oregon : moonless, dark, and cut with bright scatters of stars.

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