THE QUIET seemed so precious that we broke it only gently for the rest of the day. All our conversations were conducted in whispers, and although I am generally a spirited reader of my own work, my reading of “Bivalves from Outer Space,” the fourteenth episode of Dead Air, was uncharacteristically subdued.
I WAS ANNOYED when the Babbington Reporter ran the photograph that I had taken of Porky White tossing clams into the air outside his clam bar and interpreted it as a photograph of flying saucers on maneuvers. It wasn’t true, for one thing, and for another no one from the Reporter had even called me to ask for my personal interpretation of the objects in my own photograph.
“I’m going to call them and tell them the truth,” I told Porky.
“The truth is a fine thing,” he said. “Sometimes it makes a good story.”
Then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he said, “Tell you what, though — why don’t you try your story out on the guys at the counter? See what they think of it.”
He urged me over to the counter and announced, “Peter’s got a theory about those spaceships.”
The men stopped talking and looked at me. Slowly, each of them let his expression slip into the tolerant smile that adults turn on a precocious child who’s about to serve up a half-baked idea.
“They’re not flying saucers,” I said. “They’re clams.”
“Clams!” said one of the men, the clamdigger everyone called Mucker.
“Porky threw them into the air,” I said, “and I took the picture.”
They all looked at the copy of the Reporter that lay on the counter in front of them.
“What’s going on here?” asked Mucker. He looked back and forth between Porky and me. “Are you testing us? Trying to see if we’re gullible enough to fall for a preposterous story like that?”
A grumble rumbled along the line of beefy men.
“Now wait a minute there, boys,” said Porky. “Let’s think about this rationally. Don’t you think it’s just the least little bit odd that these flying saucers should look so much like clams? Doesn’t it seem awfully strange that highly advanced beings from another planet in another galaxy would travel around in spaceships shaped like clamshells? It seems strange to me.”
“You know,” said Mucker, “you’re right. It does seem strange.”
“Of course,” I said. “You see — ”
“It makes you wonder how clams got here, don’t it?” said Mucker.
“What?” I said.
“I mean,” said Mucker, speaking slowly but enthusiastically, in the manner of a molecular biologist addressing an informal gathering of nonscientists, “if clams look so much like these ships from this advanced civilization, how come they’re here, on earth?”
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
“Just consider this,” said Mucker. “Suppose clams were brought here.”
“Brought here?”
“From outer space,” said Mucker.
“From outer space?” I said.
“He’s right,” said Axel Dunne, one of the men who bought clams for the Babbington Clam Company. “Why else would clams look so much like these ships?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m trying to tell you that — ”
“Look,” said Mucker, with the patience of a teacher of the blind, “clams are one of the oldest living things on earth, am I right?”
“Right,” said Porky, and all the clamdiggers at the counter echoed him, nodding their heads with the certitude of professionals.
“So,” said Mucker, “what that suggests to me is” — and to heighten the effect of the pronouncement he was about to make he paused a moment before continuing — “that these visitors have been here before.”
“Come on,” I said, occasioning a number of stern looks from the men at the counter and a firm grip on the shoulder from Porky.
“Long, long ago,” said Mucker, whose audience now hung on his every word, “they came here — I’m just speculating, now, you understand — these beings came here, and they planted a crop.”
“Seed clams,” murmured the men at the counter.
“This is all speculation, mind you,” said Mucker, holding both hands up to emphasize that he had nothing up his sleeves, “but just follow along here with me for a bit. They plant this crop, these beings, whoever they are, whatever they are, and they let it grow. They let it grow, and they wait.” A hush fell over us all. Mucker lit a cigarette. “Now they’re back to check up on it. Maybe they’re going to do some weeding. Maybe they’re going to harvest. Who knows? Maybe it’s only been a couple of weeks to them since they planted it. Who knows?”
Confronted with this logic, we all looked at the picture on the front page of the Reporter for a while in silence.
“You know,” said Axel, finally, as if, for him, the proof had come in at last, “they do look like clams.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, but Porky jabbed me with his elbow, so I shut up.
AFTER THE READING, Lou called out, “Tonight’s featured drink is a little invention of my own. I think I’m going to call it the Baldy, after the dummy that Peter’s been telling us about — not in tonight’s episode, but in a couple of the earlier ones.”
He lined glasses up along the bar and filled them.
The Baldy was a fine drink — tart, bitter, and strong. It wasn’t appealing at first sip, but it grew on me. I have no idea what was in it. I could guess, but guessing would be like looking at a photograph of blurry objects suspended in the air above Babbington and guessing that they were flying saucers, the mother ships of the family of clam. I might be right, but I’d probably be wrong, and I wouldn’t want to mislead you into making a bogus Baldy based on my mistake.
[to be continued]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
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You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.
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