CHAPTER ELEVEN

                 We lay there in the darkness, basking in the after-glow of lovemaking. She picked up a pack of Luckies, shook out a couple and offered one to me.

                 "No thanks," I said. "I don't smoke."

                 She struck a kitchen match, waited for the sulphur to burn

away, held the flame to the tip of the cigarette and took a deep draw. She held it for a few seconds and blew it toward the ceiling. "Did you really come here in a flying saucer?" she asked.

                 "Not exactly. I did come here by air, but not in a flying saucer or space ship."

                 "Where did you really come from? Is your home here on earth or did you come from Mars or some place like that?" she asked.

                 "As dull as it might sound, I am totally human and I live right here on earth, in Colorado."

                 "Melvin said that you came in a flying saucer and got left here when he almost caught it. He said that people will be coming to rescue you with ray guns."

                 "Melvin has a rather vivid imagination. It's true that I come from a place a considerable distance from here, not so much in distance as in time. I seem to have moved backwards forty years through some sort of time warp to get here. When I left home this morning, the year was 1986."

                 "What's a time warp?" she asked.

                 "It's a rather complicated theory that if a person can travel at the speed of light, he can move either forward or backward through time."

                 "How fast did you have to go to get here?" she asked.

                 "Actually, only about sixty miles an hour, but evidently something that I don't understand happened along the way."

                 "How are you going to get back to where you belong, or are you trapped here forever?" she asked.

                 "I wish that I knew those answers myself. Since I don't know how I got here, I have no idea how to go about getting out of this situation. One thing for sure, I can't sit still until the sheriff finds me again so I am going to have to do something. No telling what he might do if he gets hold of me again."

                 "That's certainly true. The sheriff is a vicious, sadistic man who gets pleasure from hurting people. That's the reason why we aren't married any longer."

                 I wanted to ask her more about that subject but decided that I would be digging into a personal area where I had no business. Perhaps it was also a subject about which I didn't really want to know.

                 She stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table, laid her head on my shoulder and became very quiet. I guessed that she was trying to fathom what I had told her. She was probably also wondering whether I telling the truth or was simply some sort of nut. Either way, she didn't seem to be in a hurry to kick me out into the street or turn me back over to the law.

                 The street in front of her house was gravel and I could hear the crunching of tires as cars drove past. Most of them seemed to be going very slowly and occasionally, I could see the flash of a spotlight as it swept across the house. Obviously, they were still looking for me.

                 I guessed the time to be around midnight and it had been more than an hour since I heard the last car drive past. Maggie's steady breathing told me that she had dozed off. She was probably tired from a long day on her feet and a good romp in bed was all that she needed to put her to sleep. I felt that it was now safe enough for me to try to get to the airport so I tried to pull my arm from beneath her neck. She stretched, yawned and snuggled close to me. Her hair smelled clean.

                 "Are you awake?" she whispered

                 "Maggie, I think that it's time for me to go. I hate to ask any more favors of you, but do you have a car?"

                 "No, I don't have one. I got this house in the divorce settlement, but we never owned a car. He always had the sheriff's car to drive so he never needed to buy one," she replied. "I suppose that I'm lucky to have gotten the house because neither of his other wives got diddly-squat when they left him. You met one of them, Lillie, the telephone operator. She was his first wife and the mother of the son who was killed in the war."

                 "In small towns like this, it seems that everyone is related to one another in some manner and everyone knows what is going on. I'll bet that people have to be careful what they say or do around here."

                 "That's certainly true. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if everyone in town didn't already know that you and I were in bed together tonight," she said with a laugh.

                 "And here I thought that we were being so discreet."

                 "Are you sure that you have to go?" she asked as she snuggled her warm body closer to mine and ran her fingers up my neck and into my hair.

                 "As tempting as I find your offer, I'm afraid that I do have to go," I told her as I disengaged her arms from around my neck.

                 "If you need for me to take you somewhere, I could borrow a car. My boss has one and I'm sure that he would loan it to me."

                 "That's OK, it's not that far to where I need to go. I'll just walk there."

                 "Where do you need to go?" she asked.

                 "Maggie, considering what you have told me about the sheriff, it's really better that you don't know."

                 "Why, don't you trust me?"

                 "It's not you, it's the sheriff that I don't trust. There's no telling what he might do if he thought you had helped me escape."               

                 She turned on the small bedside lamp and slipped on her robe. When I had dressed and picked up my backpack, she turned off the light, took my hand and walked to the front door with me. She stepped onto the porch, looked both ways to be sure that the street was clear and said, "I'm afraid for you and hate to see you go."

                 "I'll be fine and thanks again for all that you have done for me."

                 "No matter what it takes, don't let the sheriff and his men catch you. They have killed people before and will probably do so again," she whispered with a little sniff as she clung tightly to my hand.

                 "If I can make to daylight, I'll be long gone from here," I told her.

                 She put her arms around my neck and pressed her warm body against me. I could feel tears on her cheeks. "Please be careful and take care of yourself," she whispered as she gave me a lingering, wet kiss.

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