The Secret

Then (1959)

Near Branxton, Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia . . .

Their Dad always said Moxie had the sensitive connection with living things, and Zeke had the way with mechanicals, and how much Dad appreciated and trusted their help around the station. Particularly while he was away from home on overnight duty in town at Branxton Fire Brigade, earning extra firefighter’s income.

        The afternoon that it happened, Moxie Baker, her palomino mare Trigger, and Dingo the Blue Heeler were in the farthest paddock, inspecting a cattle trough. Girl and pony had been inseparable for most of Moxie’s eleven years, so the responsibility of riding out back and checking that the water-pumps were working didn’t feel like a chore. Mischievous steers chewed everything and sometimes messed up the pump fittings, either emptying the troughs or flooding them to overflowing.          

        Dingo was plunged in the trough and Trigger lipping the water, when a bright flash streaked across the vast sky, sucking sound away in its vortex.

      Dingo bust the eerie silence, dashing along the fence-line in the wake of the flare, barking like crazy. There was a searing explosive impact beyond the rise and a rumbling earth tremor that startled the cattle and jittered Trigger.

        Moxie steadied her pony and stood in the stirrups, squinting into the horizon. ‘Was that a shooting star?’ Were shooting stars visible in daylight, she wasn’t sure. ‘Or, was that an aeroplane crash, Trigger?’

      Fighter planes from “Potshot”, the RAAF Base at Learmonth, flew all over the Exmouth Gulf, frequently tearing apart the sky. Had one crashed?

      Moxie whistled for Dingo to get behind and urged Trigger to a gallop. When they crested the rise, she saw the landscape freshly gouged. A long tear had ripped out the coarse, low scrub and churned the red earth. The ground was studded with scattered bits of metal, reflecting in the sun, silver, and as thin as tin foil.

        Trigger snorted and dug her hooves in a bone-jarring halt. Moxie’s horsepersonship saved her from pitching over Trigger’s head. The pony shuddered violently, then backed up stiff-legged, unwilling.

        Staring ahead, Moxie’s stomach flipped. Trigger’s reaction was completely justified: Moxie couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing, either. A circular craft, about 25 feet across, was half-ploughed into the ground on a steep camber, with more of that strange silver foil debris blasted all around as if from some catastrophic failure.

        Moxie reassured Trigger, slid out of the saddle, and hitched the reins over a bush, trusting her beloved pony wouldn’t spook again and bolt for home.

        She moved closer on foot, Dingo at her heels. Then the dog woofed gruffly and ran towards three little bodies, the size of children, lying on the ground. Two of the figures were obviously deceased, their bodies still and greyed. But the third stirred pitifully at the investigative press of the dog’s cold nose.

        Moxie ran and crouched down, eyes bugging. The little being lay in the full scorch of the afternoon sun, so Moxie lifted it up, surprised how slight it was, and transferred it tenderly into the shadow cast by the craft. She settled it back down as carefully as she could while it opened and closed its mouth as if gasping for breath, but emitting no sound.

        Its head and eyes were large; it’s other facial features almost non-existent. The small body had arms and legs, but wasn’t human. It turned its head, looked at her with olive-dark eyes. It raised a skinny arm and pressed three spatulate fingertips into her left palm; a strange, tingling sensation. Intense emotions of despair wracked Moxie, communicating the loneliness and distress it suffered at the death of its companions.

        She knelt and tried to assist it to drink from her water bottle, but its mouth was such a slim slit, the liquid simply splashed down its pointed chin.

        She fanned it softly with her Akubra, and tried talking aloud, but the little being only blinked its eyes once and stirred feebly in the sand.

        In the end, Moxie said, ‘I don’t know what else to do. I’m really sorry.’ She picked up two pieces of the unfamiliar metallic debris and stowed these in her saddlebag. ‘I’m not stealing. People won’t believe me otherwise,’ and scrambled to her feet, willing the extraterrestrial to understand. ‘I’ll come back; I promise. I’m going to get Dad and the truck.’

After (1959) . . .

As she raced for home, a dark unmarked helicopter circled Moxie and her animals clockwise once, then flew on towards the crash site. She heard the wail of emergency sirens in the distance, and turning her head, saw the flash of red as firetrucks dashed by, churning contrails of dry dust in their wake.

      Branxton Radio 6:00 pm news reported an unidentified flying saucer, a UFO, had imploded outside of town and was being investigated by the authorities. There was no mention of the little beings.

      Mama received a message that the firefighters had orders to report direct to “Potshot” the RAAF Base, where they were detained for “debriefing”. Moxie and Zeke wouldn’t see their father, Will, for nine days.

       Throughout the night Moxie couldn’t sleep for worrying, her rest disturbed by the rumble of heavy trucking along the tarmac road that ran past the front gate of their station but petered into a dirt track not long after.

        The next morning – the frontpage of the Branxton Weekly newspaper, special edition, featured photographs of a uniformed air force officer displaying the foil-like debris; and articles about the crashed UFO.

        That afternoon – the bureau printed a special new edition, with a different picture of the same air force officer holding junky pieces of stick and material that looked like child’s play, under a headline exclaiming, “False alarm! Only a weather balloon.”

        Two days later, Dingo rushed barking to the Baker’s front door. Through the sitting room window, Moxie watched a helicopter fly in and hover down in their home paddock, flattening the grass.

        Two men, dressed identically in dark suits and hats, ducked under the rotor blades, vaulted the fence and barged the steps to the porch.

        Dingo was growling up a storm. Mama went to the front door, and called to Zeke to come and hold the dog.

      The first Man, blocking the doorway said in a foreign accent, ‘Looking for the girl with the palomino.’

      Without allowing Mama chance to respond, he pushed aside the flywire door and shoved his way inside the house, forcing Mama to back up along the hall like he was blowing on a feather.

      The second Man laid his hand heavily on Zeke’s neck and made him drag resistant, scrabbling Dingo out of the house commanding, ‘You chain up that animal.’

        The first Man made Moxie and Mama sit at their formal dining table, opposite each other, straight-backed like for church. His stare narrowed on Moxie, boring into her. ‘We’re going to talk about that crashed weather balloon.’

      Moxie longed to ask if the little being was okay. But mistrust of the man’s demeanour quelled her tongue.

      ‘Did you see the balloon?’

      ‘It wasn’t a balloon.’

      ‘Little girls,’ he said, unhooking a mean-looking baton and extending it with an easy flick of his wrist, ‘Shouldn’t … tell … lies!’ He thwacked the baton against the palm of his own hand, a beat to emphasise each word. ‘You’re trying to be interesting. If you saw it, you’d know it was a balloon. Don’t lie.’

      ‘I’m not lying!’

      The Man bent close, blowing rancid breath in Moxie’s face. ‘Don’t play stupid. You need to understand. You didn’t see anything. In fact, you were never there. Say it!’

      Moxie shut her mouth and stared out the window, waiting for Mama to intervene; to scold the Man for encouraging her daughter to fib, being raised not to lie.

      Mama sat tense at the front of her chair. She didn’t say a word but moved to reach her hand across.

      ‘Hands to yourself!’ The Man whacked the table.

      Moxie and Mama flinched like shot had been fired. Mama had to grasp her seat with both hands and plant her feet firm on the dining room floor to steady herself.

      Moxie thought the table might split in two.

      Outside, she saw Zeke struggling furiously with the second Man, yelling, ‘Let me go. I need to be with Mama and Moxie!’ But the Man twisted Zeke’s arm high behind his back and subdued him.

      Moxie’s chest and breath tightened up and it felt like her soul was being yanked out the top of her head. To stop herself from floating away, she gripped the rim of the table.

      Their interrogator moved directly behind Mama, blocking Moxie’s view of Zeke. He pressed his knuckles in and bent Mama’s head to the table top, flattening her cheek on one side.

      Mama gasped, ‘Tell her what you need her to say.’

      ‘She has to say she wasn’t there and she has to promise never to talk about this.’

      Moxie gripped the table harder, hating to be a liar, but Mama kept her eyes on Moxie, and she comprehended Mama was conveying to comply with the Man’s demands.

      The Man dropped his voice. ‘That purty palomino you love so much – we’ll snatch her away, turn her into horsemeat.’ The way he said ‘pretty’ rhymed with ‘dirty’.

      Choke rose in Moxie’s throat.

      He thumped his palm. ‘Did you take anything from the balloon crash?’

      Moxie hesitated. ‘No,’ she said carefully. ‘I wasn’t there.’

      ‘That’s right,’ said the Man, releasing Mama who sat back up keening for breath. ‘Y’all remember now – the rest of your life. Not a word to anybody. Else it’ll be a short life.’

      He stepped up to Moxie, drew his baton across his throat, whispered awfully close, ‘We can take your family out in the desert and bury your bodies where no-one will ever find them.’

      Moxie shot to her feet, knocking her chair over.

      ‘No need to get up,’ said the Man, ‘I’ll see myself out.’

Now (2023) . . .

Zeke blows dust off a crusted tin discovered in the back of Mama’s wardrobe. He prises apart the rusted metal with a blunt kitchen knife. A pungency of Eucalyptus and mothballs. A welter of photographs and old papers slides to one side. ‘Did Mama ever talk to you about that day?’

        Moxie shakes her head, ‘No. We never mentioned it again.’

        She and Zeke have returned to the old family homestead to pack up Mama and Dad’s estate. Zeke’s relieved Moxie is here, she’s skipped many family occasions, from what he calls her blowing in the wind nomadic life. He waits for her to add, “you know I can’t talk about that”, only she doesn’t.

        Zeke studies a photo of Moxie astride Trigger, eleven-years-old, grinning under her big Akubra hat, the whole wide horizon ahead. The snapshot must be from before because – unlike his sister’s guarded, care-worn face today – Moxie then was clear-eyed, freckle-faced, indomitable. On the back, in their mother’s precise cursive handwriting, the date confirms it – a couple of months before the UFO.

        Afterwards there was Moxie’s sudden vehement insistence she’d outgrown Trigger – no point keeping her; the pony sold to a family far from Branxton; pillow-smothered sobs escaping Moxie’s bedroom the night the horse-float drove Trigger away.

        Zeke points to the photo, watches his sister’s face. ‘Thought you adored that horse.’

        ‘I did,’ she says.

        That familiar twist of guilt in Zeke’s gut, failure untempered by time: he should have set Dingo on to the man rather than chaining up the dog, escaped from the man, and protected Moxie and Mama. Another gut twist, remembering how much he’d envied Moxie seeing a UFO.

        He picks up a foxed news clipping, bold-font headline proclaiming, “Mistaken identity. Military weather balloon.” He hands it to her, ‘Could it have been a weather balloon?’

        Brinnng-brinnng!! The shrill ring of Mama’s ancient rotary dial landline in the hall startles them both.

      ‘Will those men ever leave me in peace?’ Moxie scrambles to the phone, yanks the receiver from the cradle, yells, ‘What?!’

        Conversation crackles back and forth. Zeke hearing only Moxie’s side detects the shift in her tone from belligerence to agreement.

        ‘That was a journalist,’ she says, coming back into the sitting room. ‘She’s researching the UFO history, been calling for a while. Hoping to talk to Mama, find out what she remembered about Dad’s involvement. I told her, “I can give you something better”.’ She grabs car keys, beckons. ‘You want answers? Come on then!’

        Zeke struggles off the couch, not so nimble at seventy-seven.

        They climb into the creaky Land Rover and drive over the farming land that no longer supports livestock or livelihoods. After Dad passed, Mama sold the herd, and let the land rest.

        Reaching the far paddock, Moxie beelines for the water trough. Wincing at the scrunch of ageing ligaments she kneels, yanking away weeds, exposing the concrete blocks supporting the tub. She wiggles one free, revealing a hollowed compartment and her childhood money tin. Busts open the lock with a stone.

        She passes Zeke a piece of thin silvery foil-like metal. ‘Look at this’ Scrunches it in his hand.

        Fascinated, Zeke watches the metal un-scrunch and flow back to pristine form, without scratch or fold mark visible. ‘What is this?’

        ‘Memory metal. It’s from the crash.’

        Incredulous, he tries twisting and ripping the foil. It’s as light as air, tissue-paper thin, amazingly strong. He’s never encountered anything like it, despite being an engineer.

      ‘How come you never showed me this before, Mox? I could have reverse-engineered it; made us a fortune.’

      She meets his eye, shadows in her own. ‘Because there are people who will do anything to keep it secret.’     

      Those bastards! Another stab of guilt. He hadn’t protected her. ‘Why now?’

      ‘I’m done playing their game: sick of them turning up every few years, staking out where I live and work, reminding me they know where I am, and what they can do to everyone I love.’

      Like sky lit by lightning, the nomadic trajectory of his sister’s life strikes him with abrupt clarity. Zeke’s had no idea how much his sister’s had locked up and hidden, like that money-tin; how high the stakes have been. Realises why she left home just turned eighteen and shifted jobs so often across Australia, fortunate that nursing meant there was always work. Never marrying. Never having kids. No pets. Caged, minimal phone conversations, short on detail. Missing those milestone family occasions.    

      He steps up, hugs Moxie for a long time.

      That night Moxie sits on the porch steps, watching the passage of the teeming bejewelled sky. Zeke hands her a glass of brandy, sits next to her. ‘Mox, just want you to know, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you and Mama – when the Men came.’

      She hooks an arm across his neck. ‘Oh Zeke – not your fault. We were kids. I saw what he did to you.’ She feels the tension ebb from his shoulders.

      The brandy helps, mellowing them both.

      Moxie says, ‘There’s something else. But, once you know, it will change your understanding of our world forever— ‘

      He swirls his brandy, stars reflecting in the liquid. ‘Time to share your burdens, Mox. I’m here for it.’

      ‘There were three extraterrestrials. One was still alive. It was so distressed.’ She blinks off a tear. ‘I didn’t keep my promise. I didn’t save it.’

       ‘That’s why you trained as a palliative care nurse?’

      ‘At least I could make sure others didn’t have to die alone.’

      They drain their brandies in one long swallow and set down the glasses. Zeke turns a piece of the memory metal over in his hands, gently nudges Moxie, drawing her attention to it. ‘You do realise what this means, of course?’

      ‘Well— what?’

      ‘You know: conclusive proof we’re not the most intelligent species in the universe!’

      Moxie’s silvery hair flicks as she rocks back laughing – a delicious tinkling sound seldom heard these many years. ‘Total self-centred idiots to think we are!’

      He stands, offering his hand, ‘So— we’re in this together now?’

      She grips his hand and gets up too. ‘You’re the last one I love left. I’d hate for anything to happen to you.’ She kisses his cheek lightly. ‘Heading for bed.’

      After she’s gone inside, Zeke holds the memory metal up against the night sky, notices something very peculiar in the way it seems to disappear, and is struck by a brilliant idea.

A few weeks later (2023) . . .

A couple of weeks later, Moxie has sorted out and packed up their parents’ home, but Zeke has been distracted, tinkering away in the old workshop till all hours at some secret project. She hasn’t minded, though. Cleaning the old place has been cathartic.

      Moxie has brewed hot tea which she and Zeke are enjoying with cake in the work-shed, when the sound of rotor blades slices the air. The trembling of Moxie’s hand jitters her cup and saucer in a rattle.

      Zeke steadies her shoulders, looks into her eyes. ‘I’ve got you, Mox. Let me handle this.’ He pulls a large sheet of silvery, tissue-paper thin, foil-like metal and throws it over her.

      She shivers with the tickle of it as the memory metal forms a gossamer-fine aura surrounding her from head to toe. It’s so light she can see right through it and when she takes a step it moves with her.

      ‘This,’ he says, with a McGyver smile, ‘Is what we call concealing in plain sight, and, the answer to all your problems.’

      When the black helicopter settles in the home paddock, and the men in black suits duck under the blades and stroll over to the fence, Zeke and Moxie are waiting for them.

      Without offering greeting or handshake, one of the men says, seeing only Zeke, ‘Dropping by to offer our condolences. Is your sister home?’

      ‘Don’t think you’ll be seeing her again,’ says Zeke.

***