The Bitter Past by Bruce Borgos

Author:Bruce Borgos [Borgos, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Greg Knutson, the man they call X-Files, lives in the town of Alamo, not far from the Nevada Test Site. He resides in a double-wide in a run-down trailer park with laundry hung on the line out front that is flapping in the wind and looks like it has been out there for months. He answers the door in his boxers and no shirt covering his enormous potbelly, squinting into the southern sunlight and smelling of booze.

“What do you want?” he asks, fixing his glasses over his bloodshot eyes. “Who are you?”

“Great,” Sana says to me.

“Greg, it’s Sheriff Beck. Remember me?”

The man is haggard, his unkempt brownish-gray hair partially stuck to the stubble on his face. “I remember you arrested me without cause. Who’s this?” he asks, looking at Sana.

“This is Special Agent Sana Locke with the FBI, Greg. Could we come in for a minute?”

“Do we have to?” Sana implores.

X-Files crosses his arms over his chest, and they sit like a shelf on top of his stomach. “You people will never shut me up,” he tells Sana. “I know what you’re doing out there, and I know my rights.”

Sana turns to me. “You can’t be serious with this guy.”

“Please, Greg,” I say. “I need some information.”

X-Files steps closer, his veined, bulbous red nose against the outer screen door. “What’s in it for me?”

“Depends on your information.”

The inside of the trailer isn’t any better than the outside. It is pure chaos, and when the former reporter goes into the bedroom to put on some clothes, I take a seat on a cheap folding chair while Sana tries to find a clean place to sit on the dingy sofa, finally giving up. She notes the hundreds of books and magazines stacked on bookshelves or piled on the floor. The titles alarm her, I guess, because she holds up a number of them so I can see. They are all about aliens and secret government conspiracies. The posters of UFOs on the walls are equally discomfiting to Sana. She turns to me and makes the “cuckoo” noise.

“I heard that,” X-Files yells from the bedroom. He walks out in sweats, a yellow T-shirt, and some ancient slippers. “I’m not crazy, young lady. The government tells everyone I am, but that doesn’t make it true.” He plops down in his recliner. “I’m listening, Sheriff.”

I lean forward in the chair. “I need your help with an investigation.”

At the sound of the word, the recluse’s eyes bug out. “Investigation? My specialty.” He reaches down to the coffee table and pours himself a bourbon, gesturing to us with his glass.

“Little early for me,” Sana says disapprovingly.

I wave off the drink. “I need to know what happened at the test site in 1957.” It’s a wide-open question. If something occurred that’s not on the official record, he’ll know about it.

X-Files’s eyebrows shoot up, and he slurps excitedly at his drink. “What happened? Operation Plumbob is what happened. Boom, boom, boom, all the livelong day. Twenty-nine detonations from late May to early October.

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