And there, standing on the conning tower and waving at me, was the same man who gave me the three wrong answers to the captain’s eleven questions thirty-one days ago. “It’s been you all along,” I said. “Well, what I’d still like to know, sir, is how you knew about me and those pixies and logs and such?” He put the fedora back in his pocket, reversed the jacket and put the captain’s cap on his head, pulled off the man’s full-faced mask and threw it in the water, and underneath was the captain’s face again. “Captain,” I said. “First of all I want to thank you for a most enjoyable voyage. Secondly—” The captain switched hats, reversed the jacket, pulled off the captain’s mask and took a swig from the wine bottle and became the man again. “Oh there you are,” I said. “Well, I’d still like to know who tipped you off about those logs and pixies and me.” He switched hats and jackets and pulled off the mask of the man and threw it in the water and became the captain again. “Secondly, Captain,” I said, “is a complaint, though a minor one, about why you couldn’t provide better grub for supper but carrots and canned buttered rolls. Now for the meals on your return trip, might I suggest—” But he kept switching hats and jackets and pulling off the masks one after the other and throwing them in the water. Soon he was switching outfits so fast that at times he was the man wearing the captain’s hat and trying to put his arm in both sleeves of his jacket and other times he was the captain, guzzling from the wine bottle, with the man’s mask on his head and jacket and hats sticking out of his pants pockets. He only had two hats, but the masks he pulled off seemed to be endless. Maybe he started out wearing more than a hundred masks. And under the last one, which could be of either the captain or man, was the real face of the captain or man or of someone else. Or maybe there wasn’t a face under the last mask, but just one of those two hats on top of the high turtleneck collar covering his neck. And the real face was where his neck seemed to be. And the real neck was where his chest seemed to be and his chest was where his stomach seemed to be, and so on. Till his thighs were where his shins seemed to be and his shins were in his shoes where his feet would normally be. But then where would his feet be if his shins were inside his shoes? “Goodbye, Captain,” I said, when he seemed to settle on the real face of the captain and the captain’s clothes. “Goodbye, my boy. And keep in touch.” He pulled the mask off, switched hats and reversed jackets, but seemed too exhausted to stick his arms in the sleeves or straighten the fedora from its sideways position on his head. “Then goodbye, sir,” I said. “It’s been nice knowing you both.” “Same here,” the man said, “And best of luck to you.” He reversed the jacket, but only held it on his arm. Leaned forward to let the fedora fall off his head, slowly peeled off the mask to become the captain again, and smashed the bottle against the side of the conning tower and climbed down the ladder. From inside the tower he yelled “Stations for diving… Flood main vents… Shift the control and steady so and land ho and ahead,” and closed the hatch and the sub soon submerged. I walked to your house a couple miles away. Nobody seemed to be around. I rang the bell, knocked on the door, called out your name and your mom’s, but still no one answered. I at least thought your dog Saybean would bark or run up to me and knock me over, though maybe you’d taken him for a stroll.
I looked through all the windows. The furniture was gone. Not even a curtain rod remained. I checked the mailbox to see if you might have left a note for me where you had gone. The box was stacked with mail. Included were all the letters I had written to you since I first tried to call and then got locked inside a telephone booth in New York a long time ago. I went next door. Your neighbor there, Mrs. Spinks, said you and your mom moved two months ago and left no forwarding address. “Surely someone’s got to know where they went,” I said. “I’ve come a long ways. Gone through a swarm of troubles to get here. It’s just not like Kev to slip off for even a few weeks’ vacation without first writing to let me in on his plans.” “Something very odd did happen,” she said. “Mr. Spinks and I haven’t told the story to anyone for a while now, as everyone we told it to thought we’d gone out of our minds. You see, Mr. Foy, Kevin and his mother didn’t move out of their house as plain ordinary folks would. You know: renting or selling their house and then filling a moving van with their belongings and getting in their car the last day and waving goodbye to their neighbors as they drove away. Oh no. Nothing was ever done about selling or renting the house, and you can see how the weeds have taken over and given our street a bad name. And as for their leaving. Well, they had to send all their belongings off by spaceship a week before they and their dog Saybean took off for space themselves.” “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You see? Nobody believes us. But do you want to hear what happened to them or not?” and I told her I did. “Kevin used to drop by here quite often. We loved seeing him, as he was always so cheerful and bright. But one day, when I’m making him an ice-cream cone out of the freezer, he says to me that his best friend at school is a glouter flace gerson. ‘A what?’ I said, and he says ‘A glouter flace gerson. That’s an outer space person in the Giffiggof language they speak in their country on the planet my friend comes from.’ “Then he says that his friend and his family have been living in California for five years. Working as industrial spies here for their country, which is why they look, speak and dress like us earth people when they’re on the outside. But when they’re inside their homes, they act and look much differently than us. And also speak this different language, where all the words start off with G’s and F’s. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in their house and gotten so close to them that they now think of me as their brother and son.’ “I asked where he’d heard such a story. He said ‘It isn’t a story.’ And that very evening he was going to introduce his glouter flace griend and his griend’s farents to his fom. “As you can imagine, I quickly forgot about it. To me, it was only another wild concoction that Kevin’s been entertaining us with for years and which we loved him for. But the next week, when I’m making him an ice-cream float on our soda fountain downstairs, he says how his mother has fotten griendly with these flace geeple. How she’s even glinking of their both glying off with these geeple in a flace glip to their country on that other flanet, when the flace gamily’s spy tour of guty on gearth is gup. “I said ‘Kevin, you ought to be writing science fiction for children with your imagination. Or telling these tales to an olderperson writer, so she can type them up and try and get them published for you. Not that I don’t love listening to you, dear. It’s only that you can’t expect me to believe every single word.’ “He shrugged his shoulders and said ‘If we do go, Mrs. Spinks, I’ll be sure to drop over to say goodbye to you and Mr. Spinks, as you’ve both been real kind to me.’ I told him what a mature thing that was for a young boy to be saying, and he just sucked up his soda and left with his dog.