Monica was raring to go the next morning. She woke John up at six and then provided breakfast in the car...six Hostess powdered donuts and a can of orange juice.
"Monica, you spoil me," John laughed, not really in a sarcastic manner. Sometimes she could be a real granola-type, always pushing apples and power bars on him. It was when she was unguarded and loose that Monica made entire pizzas disappear. Three beers weren't enough to sink her, either. When you reached five, though, she loosened up considerably.
They'd only been severely drunk together once. Drunk for Monica meant Mary Poppins songs and tripping over cobblestones. She insisted on playing piano at John's house. It was severely out of tune, but she played all three songs in her repertiore. On the last note of "Jingle Bells", as if on cue, her head met the keys and it was all over. He dragged her to the couch and took her shoes off. She opened her eyes and gave him a sleepy smile. It was warm and inviting and it made John a little uncomfortable. The smile said volumes about her feelings. He just pinched one of her toes and smiled back before heading up to his own bed. This was before the accident happened. No telling what would happen between them if that happened now.
"So what?" she asked, breaking his train of thought.
"We're going to have to catch this plane, I guess. Even if it means spending the night in that cemetary."
This didn't daunt either of them. It was a spooky place, no doubt, but the air was warm and scented with the flowers that grew in and out of the tombstones. The sound of the water was soothing. It lulled John to sleep the night before.
The island was quiet and still that morning. No lights were on at the police station. Dragonflies splatted against the car's windshield, smearing into a viscous paste when the washer fluid and wipers hit them.
"Wonder what Scully's up to? Probably cleaning her apartment again. Everytime I go over there she'd vaccuuming or scrubbing. It's like she's trying to keep the place in order, because she can't keep her life in order. That's the way I see it," John said. The car crunched along the oyster shell road.
"There's something up ahead," Monica said quietly as they approached the churchyard. They squinted through the dirty window. Whatever it was, it was blocking the road. "I'm getting out."
John heaved the wheel to the side of the road and rolled to a stop. "It's huge, look at it!" he exclaimed.
Monica recognized it and took off running. She stopped short of the object, as if there was a force field surrounding the piece of mis-shapen metal. "It's a propellor, my God. And we missed it," she said angrily, looking up. John touched its smooth surface, fingering the gouges. It stuck up out of the ground, bent slightly towards the cloudless sky as if it was looking for the plane, too.
"Maybe it's a good thing we weren't out here, Mon. We could have been crushed. Thing must weigh a ton."
They walked to the graveyard, hoping more had fallen from the sky. Nothing was different there. Beads of dew sparkled on the flowers and gave grass a wet sheen. "Nope, nothing here but us chickens," Monica sighed. She swiped the moss off an ancient tombstone and ran her fingers along its worn letters, trying to deciper the date.
"If we stay out here, I get to chose the food," John said, rounding an ancient rose trellis. "And one of us has got to call the FAA to come get this thing."
"Right, right," Monica said, waving her hand at him impatiently. She just about had the epitaph figured out. Mysteries cease, only us knowing, like waves we are floating.
"Sounds like a Carpenters lyric," John said. He was now standing directly over her.
"I kind of like it," Monica countered, standing up to meet him at eye level. "I keep getting the feeling those people on that plane are trying to tell us something or warn us about something."
"Been a bad time for all of us. What the hell would they be warning people about?"
"Warning us, John. You and me. You can't tell me you don't think things are about to change at the FBI. Scully's bound to hear from Mulder someday. Kersh will realize what we know, what we're trying to do. When all that happens we'll be stuck in the middle," Monica said. She seemed agitated. "Where will we be in a year?"
John looked on sympathetically but unconvinced. "I don't think this plane has anything to do with us. We're just here. Could have been anyone. Could have been Mulder and Scully. Sometimes fate has nothing to do with anything." There was no answer for her last question. Together, he hoped but didn't say out loud.
"Bullshit, John. It has everything to do with us. Ev - "
She stopped mid-word. There were suddenly thousands of huge yellow butterflies surrounding them. John could hear their wings beating against the still air. An odd feeling of peace and calm washed over him. It was like the last six months hadn't happened. Monica's face, usually furrowed with worry or fear, evened out. The sound of the fluttering wings grew louder.
Do you take this woman -
He was in a church. Monica was still beside him, but smiling now as the sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows. She was wearing white. Scully grinned from the front pew. She was sitting in a beam of colored light, all purple and gold and green. The scent of lilies and new mown grass filled the air wildly. All the other faces in the congregation were blurred, except one: Mulder was beside Scully, looking at her, saying something John couldn't make out over the minister's talking.
What you call fate brought you -
John blinked and was back in the cemetary. The butterflies all went straight up in the air and flew away in a giant yellow cloud over the treeline. Monica watched them disappear, and when she looked at him again her face was full of worried creases and valleys. John saw his own reflection in her watery eyes.
He didn't say anything else about fate for the rest of the day.
1:30PM
Sooky's Shrimp Hut
A flatbed carrying the propellor passed in front of the ramshackle seafood joint. Every head turned except for John and Monica. They were quickly dispensing of a pile of shrimp and a basket of hush puppies. Neither had said anything about the odd happening in the cemetary. There didn't really seem to be anything to say.
"Hey!"
Corporal Mosby sauntered over in full cop mode. His radio crackled with air traffic control chatter. "Word spread fast about that propellor. Seems like everyone's up at the old cemetary today."
"We'll be up there tonight," said Monica, stuffing a hush puppy in her mouth. Her hair was full of golden pollen, dulling its auburn tint.
"Y'all just be careful. Don't know what else might fall on top of you," Mosby smiled, snatching a shrimp. He ambled slowly through the rest of the restaurant, yelling back to the kitchen. They watched his cruiser pull away.
"It wouldn't be a bad place to live," John said. A speaker above them began to blare Ray Charles. "A person could get used to living at this pace."
"What, you want his job? John, all he does is write speeding tickets and fish on the taxpayer's dime."
John shrugged. That didn't seem so bad. Monica kept eating. The little stack of tails she had was growing by the minute. She almost didn't notice when a third person sat at their table. John Byrnes was drinking a coffee and stared expectantly at the two of them.
"It was a propellor. No on'e identified it as a Connie propellor, though. That's up to the FAA," Monica said, breaking the silence and shouting over the sounds of Ray's electric organ.
"You and I know what it is. The whole town's scared. I'm scared," Byrnes said.
"Why's that?"
Byrnes leaned forward. "All of us old folks...maybe we didn't look in the right places for this plane. We didn't try hard enough. I sailed all over the place, scanned the beaches, metal detected, everything. What if they were all just hurt bad and died and we never helped them? Now they're back to get us."
John leaned back in his chair, trying not to laugh. "I wouldn't go that far," he said with a half-smirk.
"Anyways," Byrnes said, getting up, "Just keep that in mind. Also, we're throwing a cookout tomorrow night if you'd like to come. It'll be at about six down at the old yellow house next to the cemetary turn-off."
"We'll be there," Monica smiled. "If the food's free, we're there." She nudged John under the table. He pinched her thigh.
9:00PM
Salem Church Cemetary
They brought everything in plastic bags. Monica had her Doritos, John was happy with his Gatorade and Oreos. There were wet wipes, Kleenex, bottles of water and blankets. They were prepared for any stakeout in New York or DC or the desert.
But there was no bug spray. The mosquitoes were out early and they were thirsty. It was so bad that they were already covered with bites by just getting everything out of the trunk. They sat in the front seat, itching and scratching and sweating miserably.
The moon hung fat that night and shone like daylight through the windshield. Monica was reading a magazine with a penlite, leaving John to recline his seat and close his eyes.
"John?"
"Yeah? What is it?"
"When we were out here this morning, did you have any sort of hallucination?"
John sat up and faced her. She was scratching the back of her neck with the penlite, belying her serious tone of voice. "Did you?" he asked cautiously.
"I thought for a moment I was at somebody's wedding. Dana was there. You were there."
He gulped, eyes going wide. Monica let her head fall against the back of the seat with a thwap.
"It was probably nothing. Sometimes I...never mind," she said.
The air in the car grew very still. It was like the moments they sat muddled by one another before the accident happened. John knew he had to break the silence, but didn't want to divulge his little secret. It just sat too close to his heart. What would she want with a man ten years her senior anyway? A man who had a face full of scars, a gimp knee and ears big enough to set sail by?
"I thought I was in a church for a second. The light was shining through the stained glass," John said, trying to smile. A thought occurred to him that maybe it was Salem Church, gone long ago back into the mists of the island. "Nice night."
"You can really see the moon out here," she said in a drowsy voice.
"Yeah," John said. Suddenly feeling bold, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Monica leaned into his half-embrace and moved closer, resting her head against his shoulder.
This was a revelation to John. His heart melted. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time. Things had never been this way with anyone else. Not with his ex, God bless her. This just felt so right. That just felt so routine.
She smelled like the flowers and the sea. John thanked God they still made cars with bench seats. He caressed the back of her neck while Monica smiled and scratched at a bite on her arm. This was the woman who laughed at his Ozzy impression and managed to get spaghetti sauce on her ceiling during a cooking binge. Sometimes she just knew things and this scared John. He didn't know much about her past and she knew everything about his. Now here she was, smiling shyly, practically sitting in his lap.
They waited and waited. The warm air made John drowsy. Monica was already asleep against his arm. His head dipped once, twice...and finally at three a.m. he gave in to the Sandman. Neither of them saw the dark shadow that hovered over the cemetary and flew off in the direction of the moon.