Craig Tucker sat on a stool in the Hotel Bar, eating breakfast and perusing the morning edition of the local newspaper. Although the front page headline read that predicted weather patterns for the region may be some cause for concern among property owners, Craig thought no more of the news that morning than he ever did . He owned no land in the area, and so he felt no anxiety about the way in which the sky was a little less blue than usual, and in the distance dark clouds billowed as though they might just choose to draw closer. Unlike the older residents of Barbelo, who remembered the last time storm broke over this the Radiant Basin and washed most of the small town away, Craig was not conditioned to feel fear at the notion of rainfall or even electromagnetic storms. He rustled the front pages of the paper in indifference, and gave the classifieds and the opinion columns at the back a quick glance over instead.
When there wasn't major weather news to report, papers like Jimmy Valmer's Basin Bugle were mostly classifieds and opinions. Many of them were related to the price of liquid plant food or rising water taxes, and had the unfortunate quality of being thoroughly uninteresting. He sighed and folded the paper in half, setting it down on the bar and picking up the slightly misshapen fork he had been provided to eat with. From the corner of his eye, Craig could make out the sub-headline, which (on an equally uninteresting note) read: UFO SPOTED OFF HIGHWAY 239 - FRINGE CULT LEADER ANNOUNCES THE APPROACH OF THE END OF DAYS.
This would have been more ominous if that exact same leader hadn't been making the exact same announcement bi-monthly, since long before Craig even thought of moving here.
Why was it that even the simple act of reading the newspaper was wearing in this town?
Craig poked at his strip of bacon, his eyes sore from sleep and his head heavy, as it always was first thing in the morning. He had no one to talk to over breakfast – the residents were as friendly as they ever were, but after an exchange of polite greetings they retreated to their own tables, sipping instant coffee and discussing tomato fertilisation techniques amongst themselves. Their chatter blended pleasantly into the sound of the grandfather clock ticking next to the liquor shelf, and the muffled sound of excitable tourists pouring out of their dusty busses and into the car park outside. Soon, the rustic little bar would be cramped and packed with foreign patrons - people he had never met and could have gone his entire life without knowing. The idea of masses of camera toting tourists sweeping in and ejecting him from his comfortable spot made him a little bitter, but it was something that he, like the other permanent residents of the town, just had to live with. It had happened before, and would happen again. It was an integral and unavoidable part of living in the town.
He finished his bacon and tried a forkful of scrambled eggs. Upon chewing them a little, he found them to be crunchy with sand. This was also a local inevitability. If nothing else, the Radiant Basin could definitely boast a certain proliferation of sand. Without a qualm he continued eating, scanning the UFO article given second priority on the front of the Bugle and learning absolutely nothing more from it than he knew already. The upcoming blood moon and a rash of spring alien sightings, the same sightings which had brought forward the surge in summer tourist traffic through the region, had agitated the strange Christian sect a few hundred miles off road to the point of announcing the end of days was due on Tuesday. Craig thought that that seemed like very inconvenient timing. The new episode of That-One-TV-Show-He-Liked came out on Wednesday, and it would be dreadfully disappointing should he die not having seen it. He wondered what general wider opinion on the topic might be, but suspected that right now the number one priority of almost every single person in the town was the well-being of the local glass-house produce, and ensuring that Town-wide drainage issues did not result in a mass evacuation being required. In their concern, it was unlikely that most had even read past the first article at all.
"I see the Foundation people are at it again."
Kenny McCormick gave Craig a hell of a fright, slamming half a bottle of barbecue sauce down in front of him in case, in some sick and perverted alternate universe, Craig felt the urge to put the stuff on his eggs.
"Jesus Kenny!"
Kenny was a local boy - a bar tender and host who went out of his way to make friends with even the most unpleasant and wary of travellers. Most of whom would have had to compete for this title against Craig. A short and sturdy character, with freckles and straw blonde hair, Kenny had a confident, laid-back attitude about him that Craig found irritating, yet enviable. He always had something interesting to say about the local institute of apocalypse enthusiasts, and this was subject that Craig also happened to have an interest in. If only because when it came to dealing with The Foundation for the Propagation of Trans-Universal Consciousness, knowledge was the best way to resist their bizarre and evangelical wiles.
Craig grunted, and scraped the last of the sandy egg onto his fork.
"Weirdos will be weirdos."
"They just won't leave it well enough alone. All the big city newspapers stopped paying attention to their bullshit years ago."
Kenny shook his head and turned away, rattling bottles and glasses on the shelf behind the bar in the process of procuring himself breakfast too. Usually, Kenny's breakfasts consisted of Pabst Blue Ribbon, watered down with more Pabst Blue Ribbon. Sometimes he ate toast, but not regularly.
Craig shrugged, finally finishing his last morsel of eggs, and watched as the locals sat around eating their breakfast and talking about how many tomatoes they were going to harvest today. Or how likely it was that the clouds on the basin rim might move overhead. It was only just gone seven thirty am, but already the heat was so thick he thought he was going to have to pass the day in his underwear. Or, in a singlet and cut-off jeans, at least.
"I gotta head back to State City today, Craig. Butters wants me to pick up some more rice and beans and steaks." Kenny turned back to him, clutching an opened can of cold Pabst and pointedly ignoring the foam dribbling down the side over his hand. "I hope you fixed my brakes real good."
Craig nodded, using his tongue to probe at the slightly grainy texture the eggs had left on his teeth.
"Guess what was wrong with them," he said.
"Sand again?"
Craig nodded. Kenny rolled his eyes.
"I dunno what we would done if you hadn't came along when you did, Craig. You saved all of our asses.”
Craig gave him a sarcastic smile, because although employment at the local garage and car repair shop was steady and fairly simple, he knew as well as everyone else in this building that he was no mechanic. His father had entertained an interest in auto magazines when he was a child. Craig had entertained an interest in the models who featured in them. Any knowledge he had about cars was incidental.
"I'm an astronomer," he reminded him, and Kenny laughed his quiet, sniggering little laugh.
"Everyone round these parts is an astronomer,” he replied. “All you gotta do it look upwards."
Craig didn't argue. He had an entire van to dissect and inspect today, and if he didn't do it no one else in the little town would. He would be better to just pick up his spanner and his greasy rag and make peace with the fact he spent five years on a piece of paper he would never actually use for anything. Especially if he planned on continuing to live here indefinitely.
"You got any thoughts about this weather then, sky expert?"
Kenny stopped laughing and pointed out the dusty window, at the steel coloured heavens over the distant Basin rim. He was good at hiding it, but Craig could tell that even he was becoming a little unnerved by the meteorological reportings. And Kenny was the sort of person very rarely shaken by anything.
Craig shrugged, nudging his empty plate back over the bar.
"Looks like rain," he said mildly.
“Yeah? Then you better get to and start working. If that rain starts coming you bet your ass you don't want to be stuck underneath half a tractor."
He was probably correct.
The stranger came in a rusty Mitsubishi, carrying a backpack filled with instant coffee granules and a thick manila folder. Craig was almost finished with his van when he heard the wheels crunching on the gravel of the gas station yard. Unsurprisingly, the greyish clouds on the horizon had cleared by ten am, so when he wheeled himself out from under the engine he was almost blinded by the vivid yellow glare of the sun.
"... Hello?” Craig raised his hand to shield his eyes, and the blurry silhouette of a strange man emerged from the haze, haloed like an angel in daylight. "What's the problem?"
The man shrugged, a very un-angelic gesture, and twisted his fingers together nervously.
"Do you know how much further to the Radiant Basin?" he asked, his speech tinny and accented in an unfamiliar way.
Craig blinked sand out of his eyes and sat up properly.
"You're in the Radiant Basin," He informed him. "If you're looking for Barbelo, it's just behind me."
He gestured to the buildings clustered behind the station, the nearest being the Hotel he had eaten breakfast at earlier that morning.
The strange boy chewed the inside of his cheek, like someone who had a follow up question he was too hesitant to ask.
In the end the desire to have an answer won out.
"I'm actually looking for the compound."
Against his will, Craig found his eyebrows creeping slowly up his forehead.
"The compound?”
He was tempted to ask why anyone heading out to the compound would willingly tell him about it. Usually, Foundation applicants hurried through Barbelo without so much as a nod to any of the locals, and Craig had drawn the conclusion that FTUC partisans, colloquially known as ‘Disciples' tended to be secretive types. The boy did not provide any further explanation, however, so in the end Craig had to relent and give an answer. Or at least, he had to try and make one up.
“Well, I think it's about ninety miles that way."
Craig, like most locals, had never been to the compound. Everyone he had asked in the past didn't seem to have a clue as to the location either, so he just pointed west side of town and hoped the stranger wouldn't notice.
The boy saw through the ruse immediately though, shaking his head in distaste.
"I just came from there," he said stiffly. "Besides, I need gas."
Craig studied him for a moment, taking in the details of his clothes and hair and face, and having become interested despite himself he leaned forward a little in his spot on the ground, elbows coming to rest against his dusty knees.
"Then I'm your guy."
Craig had seen some weird folks come out these ways to see or join the compound – people from all locations and all walks of life. Shit, he had even had friends taken in by promises of life and salvation and communion with God, but honestly he had to say that this boy standing here in old clothes and new Ray-Ban sunglasses was probably the weirdest. Most notably because, by anyone's standards, he wasn't actually that weird at all.
He stood with some difficulty – the hot midday sun often left him feeling a lot older and more desiccated than he was – before dusting off the seat of his shorts and leading the stranger back to the pumps by which his rusted silver vehicle was parked. Reaching for the fuel pump, he gestured that the stranger should go into the workshop to make payment while he filled up the tank. The boy in jeans and sunglasses pressed his lips together and frowned at him, and Craig got a strong feeling like this stranger didn't like him all that much. Maybe he had watched too many movies about the dangers of backwoods locals in the past. Craig, frankly, didn't think all that much of him either - his skin looked burned and red from the heat, and his long blond hair made him look like one of the kids Craig hated in school. The pretty ones that all the girls had a thing for. It was obvious that a guy like this wasn't made for this kind of town.
"Uh, it's okay man, I can fill it myself."
"Don't you trust me to do it? What do you think I'm going to do? Stick a bomb in there or something."
The look he received in response made Craig sure that that was exactly what the stranger expected, though he tried very hard to deny it. City Folk weren't very good at hiding their prejudices regardless of what they thought, and as a former ‘City Folk' Craig could spot it better than anyone. He scoffed, and hitched the gasoline nozzle off the rack beside him.
"Look. All I do is open this," he slapped open the fuel hatch on the side of the car and rammed the nozzle inside. "And then I do this. Ok?"
The boy narrowed his eyes at him, Craig could sense him doing it even from behind his shades, and his lips thinned even more than Craig would have suspected possible.
"Ok. Pay in there then?"
He pointed to the shop at the back of the lot, with a chest freezer full of ice by the door and a faded Mothman Prophecies poster in the window.
"Sure. Give Scott a poke and he will wake right up."
Scott Malkinson was a friend of the pub owner, one of those types who hung around in the town without ever seeming to hold down an actual job, and Craig always got the impression that he wasn't really good for much besides running the store on the mechanics yard and selling bottled water and cassette tapes to passers-by. Somehow, though, he kept on surviving, and he had always taken the time to be fairly civil with Craig. As such, Craig didn't actively dislike him, although he did happen to think he was a bit of a dork.
Despite being safely walked through the process of what Craig was doing, the stranger lingered just long enough to watch him finish filling the tank and pulling the nozzle back out again. Of course, he pretended not to be when Craig glanced up and him and snapped the fuel hatch closed.
"Your payment better go through alright,” he paused, unsure if he should play with this guy a bit or just let him go unscathed. He decided on the former. “Out here we pull out your teeth if it don't."
The boy turned an unhealthy grey and stumbled away, hurrying toward the shop as though he thought Craig might chase after him and string him up by his ankles. Smirking, Craig turned his back and gave the vehicle a quick glance up and down. A Sigma. Late eighties probably. The paint was flaking on the door panels, and the squareness of the front end was so hideous it was very nearly laughable. When he cupped his hands against the back passenger window and peered in, he saw a mountain of empty coffee cups on the seats, and a few empty prescription pill bottles on the floor.
There was a faded bumper sticker on the rear of the car that said ‘I want to believe', and this made Craig laugh aloud. He had wanted to believe in something once too, and just look at the place where he wound up. If anyone cared to ask his opinion of believing, he would probably have to say it wasn't worth it.
He jumped when he heard someone cough behind him, and spun around so fast that a small dust cloud coloured the cuffs of his jeans orange red.
"You guys don't take credit," the boy said quietly. "I need to grab some cash, if you don't mind."
Craig realised he was blocking access to the vehicle's trunk, and immediately moved out of the way. For some reason, he was embarrassed to be caught inspecting the bumper of an unfamiliar car, particularly after the owner had explicitly expressed distrust towards him.
The boy fumbled open the boot as though Craig's presence was making him jittery, and after rummaging around between large black rubbish sacks of unknown content, he conjured a fistful of five dollar bills. Craig checked the metre, saw he owed him forty seven dollars sixteen cents, and sighed in defeat.
"Give me $45 and we will call it evens," he said, holding out his hand for the cash. Nervously, the boy pushed his sunglasses up on his head, and Craig was taken aback by the bright, pale green of his eyes.
"But it says $47."
"Yeah. And I'm telling you, you can have it for $45."
The stranger stared so hard and for so long that Craig very nearly ended up taking it back. There was something dreadfully unnerving about the way he looked at him, something vacant and at the same time acutely present, as though in a single look he was seeing every detail of Craig's face and thoughts in an effort to find something to be afraid of. He was failing, and this didn't seem to sit well on him. His sunburned cheeks went even redder and he looked away, pushing a wad of cash into Craig's hand and turning to pull down the lid of the trunk. This action flattered the way that his back muscles moved under his shirt. A fool could see that this stranger was bigger and more muscular than Craig was - whatever his fear happened to be, it was irrational, because he sure looked a lot like he could take Craig on any day.
"Thanks," Craig told him, watching him round the side of the car and yank the door open hurriedly. The stranger raised a hand at him in a half-hearted wave, but it was not a friendly wave so much as a wave that said he wanted to get out of there as soon as he possibly could.
When he started the engine, Craig stepped back, and observed the way that dirty smoke choked out of the rear exhaust. He wondered if he should stop him, and let him know that it wasn't really advisable to drive off road in the Basin in a standard two wheel drive car, but then the vehicle was lurching forward and the chance to do so disappeared.
How peculiar.
Craig was glad to see the back of him.
The sun started setting at 9pm, so Craig decided he had better just give up on brushing sand out of the clutch of a tractor with a greasy toothbrush and go and see if the pub was still serving dinner. Evenings in the Basin seemed to draw on forever, and as he wiped oil from his nails with a filthy rag he gazed upwards to the horizon where not a hint of the cloud that had passed that morning remained. Although it was light, he could already see the waxing crescent of the moon to the west, and soon he would start to see stars too. From his part of the world, it was almost easy to believe he could see the curvature of the earth beneath him, echoed in the dome of the sky.
He washed his face and hands in the sink at the back of the mechanics shop. The liquid soap he used was mostly water. Every time the bottle got low he refilled it with tap water and every time the pale orange substance got clearer and clearer. It didn't even smell that much like oranges any more.
He added another dash of water before he left and gave the bottle a decent shake. Bubbles still formed on the surface of the liquid - a comforting sign.
He decided he would leave it a few weeks more.
The walk back to the hotel was short, and as he went he saw that from all across the town, other people had had the same idea as him. Hopefully, the bar wouldn't be too crowded with tourists. The beaten looking pickups parked outside annoyed him mildly - the idea of eating his dinner on his bed in his trailer out back due to lack of space did not excite him. His interaction with the city boy earlier had put him in a strange mood, and he had hoped that sitting amongst friendly faces, (but not too many friendly faces) listening to people chatter around him would take him out of it again.
It was strange, Craig always felt uneasy when faced with people from the cities. Maybe it was because of his roots outside the Basin ranges - no matter how long he stayed here, and no matter how many names he learned to know, he still felt a little bit like an outsider and that wasn't for want of trying to forget the outside. He wasn't born here, like most of these people, and sometimes seeing other outside folk was like seeing faded photos of relatives he shared history with, that he had he laughed and cried and ate with in the past, but he didn't actually like.
It was unsettling, and frankly he would rather forget it.
He was relieved to pass inside and find that the large congregation of people milling around the area were not in fact coming to the hotel for dinner, but to sit and watch a film in the large lounge at the back. From time to time, when Kenny was bored and the people demanded it, the hotel also served as the local cinema. The poster Ken had tacked in the window informed him that the movie screening today was 'Lord of Illusions'. Craig had watched this film drunk once, with his college roommate, and the fond memories he had of this experience were some of the few he retained from his post high-school days.
When he wiped his shoes on the doormat and wandered into the bar, he found it comfortably occupied by people, a handful of whom nodded at him as he passed. As he made his way to the stools in front of the beer taps, he decided that tonight, he would treat himself and get a full roast dinner if there was any to be had.
He treated himself most nights, given the opportunity to do so.
"Well hey there, Craig. Long day?"
The familiar voice of Butters Stotch, a chipper southerner who had inherited the hotel (and many other important buildings in Barbelo) from his property investor father, resounded across the bar. Favouring a humble, hands-on form of interaction with his clientele, Butters could often be found serving drinks and cooking dinners in his homely chequered apron most nights of the week, and tonight he busied himself washing glasses, and setting them on the drying rack next to the bar sink. Craig liked Butters about as much as he liked Kenny – that is to say he would probably be able to have an extended conversation with him without experiencing too much discomfort. As Butters had often expressed a dislike for Barbelo and its tight-knit culture in the past, he sometimes felt that, in a way two of them were outsiders together.
Craig greeted him, informed him that it had been, and took a seat in his usual chair before glancing around to get a better idea of who exactly was here today.
In the far corner, under the stuffed buffalo head Kenny had affectionately named Eric, the local hairdresser was sharing a meal with her husband and infant daughter, who was busy trying to drown her teddy bear in orange juice. Four of the fourteen teenagers in Barbelo (led by the eldest, Ike Broflovski) were by the window, sharing a pitcher of ginger beer and gossiping about the ones who were not in attendance. Several farmers, a young woman Craig knew only as 'Red' who did not speak to anyone and read thick books by authors long deceased, and the amiable Token (the local sheriff) made up the rest. Craig was considering asking for his meal to be delivered to that table, and eating with Token in order to quiz him on what the local law enforcement officials thought about reports of the upcoming apocalypse, when Butters coughed quietly and interrupted his train of thought.
"Now Craig. I don't mean to alarm you, but that stranger over there is staring at you somethin' fierce."
Craig craned his neck around to look to the far end of the bar, where at a small table tucked far in the corner, the blond-haired green-eyed city boy was seated, watching him with wide, lamplight eyes.
What the fuck? Had he gotten lost or something? Why in the name of hell was he still here?
Craig scowled when they made eye contact, and the strange boy flushed, looking down at the bowl of soup he was nursing as though breaking eye contact might have tricked Craig into believing he hadn't been watching.
Uneasy, Craig looked away and tried not to look too pissed off about it. He shrugged, and told Butters he wanted the largest plate of the fanciest food he had. Butters smiled sheepishly, and returned with a large bowl of minestrone and a dinner roll.
"Sorry," he said, although he didn't sound that sorry at all. "Kenny spent the day in the city and I had to go over to the museum building all day. There was a real nasty incident with a few of the appliances in the staff office so neither of us had time to cook a decent dinner."
"Ugh. Tell me you have dessert?"
"Cheesecake, actually. Ken got it from the store in the city."
He grinned, and slung the damp tea towel on his shoulder down. It landed on the bar with a wet slap.
"He picked up some new cleaning gear for you too, by the way. I told him to leave it by the trailer before he started the movie."
"Cool. Thanks."
Craig had wanted a new broom to sweep his caravan with for ages. He drew the bowl of soup and menial portion of bread close to him, and watched Butters wipe down the bar with hunched shoulders and a strange, spreading feeling of discomfort he couldn't put his finger on. It felt weird - like he used to remember feeling as a child, when he had to go down into his parent's basement alone. There wasn't anything immediately wrong, but there was certainly an air of something not being completely right, and it wasn't disembodied it was in everything. Eric's dead glass eyes were looking at him too harshly. The sound of Red turning pages on her books distressed him. He remembered fleetingly, the feeling of the walls closing in and the world spinning a little bit faster than he was able to process a long, long time ago, but just like the dark period of his life he called college the feeling passed and he kept his eyes focused on the shiny streaks Butters' cloth left on the bar top. He wondered if this was the foreboding feeling of approaching rain the older locals often reported feeling.
The soup was good to taste, but he found it a little gritty.
"You know," Butters startled him, placing a glass bottle of Coca-Cola in front of his plate and jolting him from thoughts about billowing grey clouds, "He's still staring. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's never seen a guy in a singlet before."
"He fuckin' has. He came to the garage earlier. I think he's one of the Foundation sorts. Asked me for directions to the compound and all that." Craig's skin crawled on his shoulders, to know that the boy was still staring, still watching him with eyes the colour of the sea that he hadn't seen in years. He felt very self-conscious of his freckles then, and the dirt and oil on his upper arms and in his hair. And the fact that he hadn't put on any deodorant since... about eight months ago.
"Really?!" Butters looked shocked. "But he's so normal looking!"
Craig understood what he meant. Usually the Foundation recruits came in bed sheets with shaved bald heads. They drove white vans with bumper stickers of grey aliens and the crucified Christ. They definitely did not wear ray-bans or keep empty coffee cups in their back seat. It occurred to Craig that he might be an academic or something, conducting a weird or unimportant survey. It seemed more likely than the alternative, because honestly Craig couldn't imagine this boy chopping off all of his stupid hair.
"I dunno. Maybe he's just having a look. I don't know if he intends to join them or anything."
'Hmm..." Butters leant low over the bar and slitted his eyes over Craig's shoulder. "Do you reckon he knows we know he's staring?"
"Nope. But if you stare any harder he will."
"Maybe you should go over there and talk to him?"
Craig was offended that Butters would even dare to suggest such a thing.
“I what?"
"You know! Go over. Talk to him and find out what he knows. Maybe he's a reporter? We could get in a real newspaper. That'd be real cool I reckon.”
"Yeah," Craig told him in disgust. "Cool for you."
Butters looked at him like a resigned mother might look at an unnecessarily bratty little child, and he knew he didn't really have that much of a choice. He groaned, frustrated that his curiosity was starting to stir again and decided he may as well act like he didn't want to do this a little longer. Just for the heck of it. The stranger was unlikely to be going anywhere tonight, anyway.
"You are one of the most unfriendly people I've ever met."
"It's a self-defence strategy. You wouldn't understand."
And he wasn't lying - Butters was a pretty relaxed and likeable kind of guy. His best defence was that particular kind of uncompromising optimism that tended to make others a little in awe. He rolled his eyes, and pulled a large, dusty glass down off the liquor shelf behind the bar.
"You're taking him a beer," Butters told him firmly, pulling a gush of golden foaming alcohol into the glass without bothering to wipe it off. "And you can't argue. If you'd do it for your mother, you'd do it for me and besides, look at him! The poor guy. He looks like a sparrow trapped in a house or something."
Craig risked a glimpse over his shoulder to see if that was true. It wasn't false. Although he did find the way the boy stirred his soup, while failing to discretely watch him out of the corner of his eye, somewhat disconcerting. He certainly looked a little ruffled, and a little unhappy, and maybe he was a little sparrow after all, trapped in the glasshouse of the Basin alone. Craig sighed, and reached for the tall glass of beer. His soup was only half eaten, but considering how badly he had wanted a roast dinner earlier Craig was surprised that he no longer had any appetite.
'Do I get a beer?"
Craig hadn't drunk a drop of alcohol since he had moved to the town. If Butters knew anything of his history of intoxication through college, he hid it well, because these days he treated Craig like he was the president of the local temperance club. He shook his head an increment, and pushed his barely touched bottle of coke towards him insistently.
"That's on the house. Now hurry up! He's been there forty minutes, and no one has paid him any attention at all. He must think the people out here are horrible!"
Butters always got irrationally excited whenever an outsider passed through, flicking on his star host switch and making sure everyone knew how much he doted on strangers in their midst. Craig had never figured out why that might have been. It seemed like an illogical amount of effort, because excepting himself every single stranger who came through left them all behind eventually, and really Butters would be better to keep his hospitality for his own.
Maybe he just missed being around people from the outside.
He slid out of his seat, and picked up both of the drinks. A tiredness that was not unfamiliar to him settled in the muscles in his back and in his arms, and he wondered if he would sleep well tonight or if he would lie awake and restless, staring at the shadows the starlight cast on his trailer ceiling.
He would worry about things like that later. Right now, he needed to survive this encounter. Again. The same encounter he had already had earlier that day. He already had a pretty good idea of how it was going to go - if he said something wrong, the stranger would laugh at him, or worse than that the stranger would lean back and look down his ever so slightly crooked nose.
Why are you even talking to me? Who do you think you are?
Craig made a point of not being anyone, in particular. As such, he found it deeply jarring when the strange boy noticed his approach and stared at him as though he might have just grown a large and very distinctive second head.
"... This seat taken?" he asked, cocking his singular head to the empty chair opposite him and setting the drinks down on the table. The boy pressed his lips together, removed his left foot from the spot it had occupied resting on the edge of the chair, and scooted back a little, like he was preparing to stand up and walk promptly away.
"No. I mean, I was resting my foot on it, but technically speaking I guess... no."
Craig stared at him a moment, observing the way in which he refused to make eye contact, despite having spent at least ten minutes glaring at him from across the room.
"Well then I'm going to go ahead and sit down then. Here. This is for you," he skid the beer a little closer to him across the table, and it left a wet stripe on the polished wood. "From Butters. Welcome to the town or something. I dunno."
The seat creaked under his weight when he sat down on it, and he missed his bar stool and the relative isolation it provided. His table mate eyed the beer suspiciously, like he didn't trust either the contents or the person providing it, but eventually he softened and pulled it closer. He refrained from bringing the beer to his lips, however, and Craig suspected that he never would.
"Great. Thanks."
The conversation lulled and awkwardly, Craig made himself comfortable. He found the table too low and too small for his legs - whichever way he sat his knees pressed uncomfortably against the underside, and if he stuck his legs out to the side he risked tripping someone up on their way to the bathroom just a few metres away. It occurred to him that this was probably why the strange boy had his feet up on the seat he was currently occupying. Craig had gone a long time without coming face to face with someone as tall as he was.
It also occurred to him that he couldn't keep calling this guy 'the stranger', and so it was he decided that he may as well ask.
"I didn't get your name earlier?"
At first, he thought he wasn't going to get a response. The look of aversion he was regarded with could have made milk turn sour in the udder. But then
"It's stupid. I can't tell you. People at school called me Tweek, though. So you can call me that too, I suppose."
Craig though that that sounded stupider than any name he could think of, but held his tongue.
"I'm Craig," he said politely. 'I'm the mechanic here."
"Yeah. I know. Some mechanic though."
Craig arched his eyebrows, trying to figure out what that might mean. Was it a jibe? A mockery? A compliment? And to think Craig had been nice enough to give him a discount!
"Alright," he said coolly, trying to return the unkind look he was receiving except better. "You got me. I'm an astronomer. But there aren't many places hiring for that skill around these parts, you know?"
This made Tweek smile uncomfortably, and Craig got the impression that he was doing so against his will. His effort to resist was evident in the crease that appeared between his eyebrows and the way his eyes kept sliding downwards, fixing on the table and his drink and the rings of moisture it left in its wake.
“I didn't mean it like that," he replied.
Craig didn't know exactly how else there was to mean it. They fell silent again, and moodily he sipped his coke, studying the walls from slightly closer than usual and scowling when Butters gave him a bright thumbs-up from behind the bar.
What an asshole.
Craig drew a deep breath and had a mouthful of Coke.
"I guess you couldn't find the compound then?"
"Mm... No. I mean, yes I couldn't find it. But also no, that's not the main problem. I started off road in the direction you sent me but..." here he trailed off, and a distinctly frustrated expression passed over his features. "My car broke down a few miles off the road. I don't know what happened. It was fine, and then suddenly boom. I thought I was going to die?"
Craig raised his eyebrows and thought that sounded like an unusual occurrence, even given the trouble that the sand tended to give older, two wheel drive cars.
"It just broke down?" he asked, "like... stopped working? Was it the brakes? The clutch? What?"
Tweek wiggled uncomfortably in his chair and tried not to look Craig in the eye. His shoulders pulled into a shrug and Craig realised that the guy wasn't actually standoffish as much as he was shy and obviously uncomfortable being this far from home.
Not that that made Craig like dislike him any less.
"Well, it didn't just stop working. There was a whole lot of white steam first, and then it just... you know. The engine died. Stopped working."
Craig frowned. That sounded like it could have been a busted pipe or something. He would have to have a look at it before he could be sure.
"Oh. Well do you want me to check it out?"
The boy frowned, eyes lifting from the table surface and delivering the most lingering, most suspicious look Craig had ever received in his life.
"Are you really the only mechanic in the town?" He asked tentatively. Craig scoffed and considered thrusting a rude gesture straight into his dumb sunburned face.
"Pshh... fine. Whatever then. I won't check it out. You can borrow a jack tomorrow morning then and go fix it yourself."
He was just about to stand up and stalk off when Tweek sat bolt upright in his seat and went to grab him. But then he thought better of it and snatched his hand sharply back to his chest.
"No!” He seemed positively desperate to avoid being abandoned again, his body tense like he was experiencing some kind of physical threat. Craig really did not like the way he had momentarily seemed like he was going to grab him. He hadn't had any physical contact with a person for months. Just thinking about it made his skin crawl.
“Fuck, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Jesus Christ I'm sorry. Don't get offended, it's lonely sitting here by myself and I think everyone in the place is staring at me!"
Craig had to crane his neck around to check if that was true. It kind of was. All of the locals were peering toward their corner fleetingly, from the edges of their eyes, and now Craig had noticed it he felt strangely self-aware and uncomfortable himself.
He sunk back down into his seat and Tweek relaxed.
"If I sit you're going to have to be a little more fucking polite."
"I am polite! Aren't I? Why? Did I say something impolite?"
Wow.
Craig could hardly believe this. He shook his head and rested his elbows back against the table.
"Don't worry," he grumbled, eyeing the untouched beer still sitting between them. "Don't fucking even worry. So where did you say your car was again?"
Tweek gnawed his bottom lip, staring unabashedly at him now as though he was trying to read his mind and figure out what it was he had done that had seemed rude.
"It's in the desert," he offered as explanation. "Just a couple of miles out. I drove it directly off the road where you sent me."
"Uh huh..." Craig tried to remember the direction he had sent him, and came up with nothing. "Well... okay. I guess we are going to have to send someone out to get it."
Tweek nodded.
"Okay, but can you fix it please as soon as possible? I'm kind of in a rush. I have to be at the Foundation in three days."
"Yeah? Well if you're heading for the compound three days is a long time to wait. As far as they are concerned the world starts ending yesterday."
This made Tweek smile a hesitant, half-smile, and he shook his head as though he was privy to something Craig needed not know.
"Just… three days. Okay?"
Craig's reluctant curiosity doubled, and he was struck once more by how out of place this guy looked in the middle of nowhere. The sunburn on his cheeks betrayed the long walk he had had to make back to Barbelo, but besides that he looked like any old kid from a college campus. A boy next door. The barista who used to make Craig's coffee when he was still at university.
"... You know, most of the people who head out to the compound. They're a little bit... uh?" he pointed his finger at his temple, indicating mental instability in a way that hopefully Tweek would understand. Tweek nodded and started working his bottom lip with his teeth again.
"Funny. Everyone says the same thing about desert people too," he glanced at the people crammed into the bar, some laughing and drinking and others eating alone. They were a loud and overly familiar group, and admittedly some were missing a few teeth, but he was right in pointing out that the idea of small town folk being threatening or mentally deviant was erroneous. None of them looked dangerous, and Craig knew from experience that around these parts, people had big hearts.
"Alright. I will give you that. But what I was getting at was more like... well. Sorry not sorry if this sounds rude but you don't really fit the profile of the people who come out here usually. It's a really specific type of person, and you seem more… like a regular guy."
A little frazzled, sure, but predominantly normal.
This made Tweek's eyebrows fly up, and the corners of his lips twitched in surprise.
"Really?"
"Really."
"Maybe I am just good at acting?"
Craig felt himself warm to him, just a little bit.
"Maybe."
And they were silent, although the silence wasn't entirely uncomfortable.
By the time 11pm rolled around, and the people in the pub started clearing out, Craig remembered that he couldn't just sit here with this traveller making petty conversation all evening - he had an empty trailer and a whole season of Speed Racer to get through before the morning. Their conversation, while tolerable, was not all that significant or helpful in his everyday life – Tweek had a few questions about the economy of the town, and the sorts of people who passed by, and Craig was happy enough to provide basic answers although he had learned a long time ago that it wasn't really wise, to make friends with transitionals. They always ended up leaving and he never heard from them again.
He was just about to stop the other boy from talking (he had just spent the last half hour being subjected to tentative interrogation about his qualifications and study experience) and excuse himself when he felt a hand come down on the back of the seat behind him, and for the second time that evening he very nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Holy shit Kenny! What the fuck?"
Kenny beamed at him and waved a tea towel in his face.
"You two look like you are having a real good chatter over here. But I'm afraid you are going to have to go. The Movie is over in the back room, so Butts and me are getting ready to close up now."
"... You're closing?" Tweek seemed distressed, and it was remarkable how fast he sprung from calm and talkative to tense and obviously uncomfortable. Craig had never in his entire life met anyone quite so neurotic. "Does this place close overnight?"
"Duh. This isn't a big city all night bar you know. There's only me and you-know-who here running it all." He cocked his head towards the bar, where Butters was meticulously wiping glasses and setting them in racks where they belonged.
"I hope you don't plan on staying the night, by the way. All our rooms are took up. Its UFO season, you know. All the overnight tour busses pass through on the weekends." He erected himself and glanced down at the still untouched and probably lukewarm beer on the table, next to Craig's empty coke.
Tweek seemed absolutely stricken.
"There's no rooms here?"
Kenny shook his head sympathetically.
"Nothing. If you're quick, you could hit up one of the locals to let you crash on the sofa. Red's pretty friendly, and all she has for company is her cats."
All of the colour drained out of Tweek's face, and Craig felt incredibly sorry for him - their exchange over the last part of the evening may not have answered his questions about why Tweek was joining the Foundation, but it had undoubtedly assured him that whatever his aims and whatever his motivations, Tweek was a likeable, albeit excruciatingly nervous sort of guy. Craig felt a little bad for thinking so poorly of him initially, but perhaps the problem was that he just wasn't good at making first impressions. Craig had a sneaking suspicion he was aware of this, as well.
“I can't do that!"
Clearly, the notion scandalised him.
"Well, you are probably going to have to. Sorry buddy. Nothing personal," Kenny clapped him on the shoulder shortly and Tweek looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
Craig could have wrung Kenny's neck. What the fuck was he supposed to do with the guy now? He couldn't invite him back to the caravan and babysit him.
Or rather, he didn't want to.
Regrettably, he realised that he didn't actually have much of a choice.
Craig sighed and raked his hand through his hair.
"You can come stay with me if you want to," he invited. "I have a stretcher in my caravan out back. Or a cot. Whatever you call it."
Tweek swivelled intensely green eyes in his direction. All of the colour had drained from his cheeks in worry, and the stark contrast of green on white was flattering, if unnerving.
"Really?"
His intense staring was making Craig uncomfortable.
"Sure. I mean, I don't have sheets or a spare pillow or anything, but it's pretty warm so it won't matter. As long as you don't mind sitting quietly while I watch stuff on my laptop."
Craig thought such a qualifier to be important - he wasn't really eager to have a houseguest as it was, let alone one who was going to tell him to turn his computer off so he could get some sleep.
He shouldn't have worried. Tweek was too busy being amazed that anyone out here in the middle of nowhere even had a laptop to begin with. Craig scowled, and informed him that he actually had internet access too - small town folk weren't as cut off from civilization as they were made out to be.
His personal opinion, however, was that this was at best a mixed blessing.
Craig's caravan was compact, but actually quite nice as far as caravans went - it had enough room for a bed, a kitchenette, and minifridge, and a bathroom he usually avoided using because if he did that he would have to empty the waste tanks regularly. The walk to the back of the pub was only a few metres anyway, and there was a perfectly good shower and toilet just through the rear entrance door. Butters never bothered locking the back of the place - the only danger of an unlocked door around here was alien abduction and honestly, if aliens wanted to abduct a guy that badly they could probably do it whether the door was left locked or not.
All the same, Craig felt very self-conscious as he showed Tweek through the skinny entrance in the side of his quarters. Even more so when he remembered that he had a whole pile of dirty glasses in the sink, and an unusual number of telescope parts scattered over the bed and floor. He advised Tweek to step carefully as he ushered him toward the tidier bed-end of the space, and after bringing in the mop and broom Kenny had deposited outside his door earlier that afternoon he began picking all the pieces up as carefully as possible.
"... It's kind of small," Tweek observed, as Craig straightened up and set a large lens on top of his cute little microwave. "Will a stretcher even fit in here?"
"Yeah. Just here in the kitchen."
He gestured to the skinny gap between his kitchenette counter and the large storage cupboards against the opposite side, where the two of them were standing. It was probably three feet across at best, and if they were to place a stretcher there it would indubitably block the passage between the end of the van Craig would occupy, and the door. Tweek seemed thoroughly unconvinced, but he said nothing, pressing himself against the cupboard so Craig could squeeze past and fetch the stretcher from under his bed.
"... I like these."
Craig stood up, fold away stretcher bag in hand, and frowned at him over his shoulder.
'What?"
"These." Tweek pointed to the blown up photographs of galaxies and nebulas stuck with yellowing tape to Craig's cupboards and ceiling. Most of them he had ripped from text books and outdated national geographic magazines. Craig also liked them, or else he wouldn't have stuck them on his walls.
'Thanks. I have this too."
He pointed at the roof above his bed, the largest empty space in his entire van, and the meticulously translated diagram of the constellations of the northern hemisphere painted in glow-in-the-dark paint.
"You like space." Tweek observed, peering upwards. "I thought you were joking about the astronomer thing but I guess not."
"You guess not," Craig smirked and passed him the bag containing the stretcher. The poles clanked together inside and Tweek eyed it just as suspiciously as he had eyed his beer earlier. "I do like some other things, but mostly... I'm a pretty boring guy."
"Yeah?" Tweek turned his eyes to him again, and again (every fucking time) the colour was disarming. Unsettling. Almost like it shouldn't really be. "Same. I think you're a little bit interesting though. I mean, you're a bit weird. Don't be offended, but uh... hm."
He looked vaguely troubled, and vaguely out of place, standing awkwardly in the middle of Craig's caravan.
Craig decided it was too late to be offended about it.
And there was evening and there was morning--the first day.