Ike and Rosie by Linda Doughty

He spent the day out in the saguaro garden, trying to get abducted. “UFO Sighting Near Oracle,” announced the headline on the front page of the morning paper. Then: “Two brilliant lights set on either side of an aircraft said to resemble the head of a donkey appeared near the town of Oracle last night. The object was reported by at least a dozen residents, between 9:37 and 10:05 pm.”

Ike had seen it. He was on the roof, preparing to bed down for the night when the UFO appeared. As was his annual custom, he hauled the small cot up the ladder braced against the adobe wall, fleeing from his home’s stuffy interior. The June heat was tripling into unbearably oppressive digits, building toward the summer monsoons. At least under the stars and on the weather-coated flat roof, Ike stood a chance of encountering a breeze. This night was clear with no threat of a storm. He stood by the edge of his casually made bed, inhaled deeply, bent his good knee, and began his slow descent.

The cot rose to meet his pale frame, loosely clad in a Grateful Dead t-shirt and tighty whities, and he sighed. Breezes brushed his white eyelashes, caressed his chapped lips, and soothed his burnt and corn-flaked nose. The pungent scent of a javelina squadron wafted upwards. Their snuffling and grunting below conjured distant memories. He thought of a time and a girl he once knew, turning his barely blue eyes to the sky. That was when he saw it. 

*

Rosie vanished six long years ago. Ike was never sure why, though Rosie left clues. Rosie didn’t like the desert climate that parched her and left her feeling desiccated.  She said she was like something that had fallen long ago, a prickly pear fruit or a lost calf, all bones and skin. Rosie coined her own platitudes: “You can’t keep stardust in a pepper mill forever.”

One day she was gone. Just gone. Ike and Rosie’s best friend Homer said he saw her go, sauntering off under a frayed umbrella that was fringed and splattered with multi-colored dots, her khaki backpack hanging low, bumping against her blue jeans in a determined rhythm. Homer saw her water bottle leaking, a drop here and there, bouncing out, unnoticed, and half thought to run after her. He didn’t. He knew Rosie. Everyone knew Rosie. Rosie was an enigma reluctantly wrapped in a tortilla, served on a plate at the Oracle Cafe. 

That evening, Homer and Ike met at The Miner’s Bar for a laugh and a couple of beers. Ike had no concerns. Rosie went on walkabouts now and then. She always ended up back home before nightfall. She was skittish and didn’t want to inadvertently step on a sleek-bellied rattlesnake luxuriating in the leftover warmth of the day. Homer told Ike a story about a horse in a yellow raincoat falling from the sky, but he did not mention, whether from embarrassment, omission, or otherworldly respect, his unreported UFO sighting. Had he known the sightings would become public knowledge he might have volunteered the particulars. Homer painted big canvases with bright colors and kooky subjects. Ike assumed Homer was brainstorming his next creation.

That was six years ago. Now, this. Ike shielded his eyes with his right hand. The object did indeed remind him of a donkey’s head, the hull elongated into a muzzle, wider behind where the two side lights shone, gray and iridescent appendages streaming aft, holding shape but ever turning. Ike wondered if this was alien radar. Then he saw Rosie peering out a window near the nose of the UFO. She waved.

                                                                          *

 And so the next afternoon Ike remained in the saguaro garden, waiting. He missed Rosie. If she wasn’t going to come down, he planned to go up there and get her. He had beer in the cooler. His lawn chair was comfortable. He was prepared to wait as long as it took.

The donkey, Prospero, brayed. Ike startled awake, blinking and confused, ready to ascend. He sought the ladder but instead found gray-lashed brown eyes. Prospero’s ears rotated like a question. Ike laughed. He and Rosie had adopted the burro from the BLM years ago.  Now the donkey commanded Ike to get a move on. Ike pushed himself up from his lawn chair, stretched, squinted up at the sky, and then headed back toward the house. He felt, more than saw, a shadow pass overhead. Hoping to glimpse something other than a turkey vulture, he scanned the horizon and saw Prospero following, head down, ears relaxed.  As Ike and the donkey neared the house, tinny music rippled. Prospero stopped in his hoofprints, ears alert. Ike regarded the donkey for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders and cautiously opened the front door. There was Rosie, sitting on the couch watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the flat-screen TV, the cat curled up on her lap. Ike kissed the crown of Rosie’s silvery head, drawn in by how normal it all seemed. She turned and smiled. “Aren’t Fred and Ginger just the perfect couple? Their dance is like poetry, like a dream made real.”

Ike, his hand lightly on Rosie’s neck, had to agree, as his thumb traced the familiar scar.

Artist’s Statement

It all comes back to relationships, doesn’t it? The relationships between sounds, colors, words, and each other. That’s why I write. Ike and Rosie take us to strange worlds, yet underlying this story is the bittersweet universality of this thing we call love.

Linda Doughty grew up in Midwest, Wyoming, described in the 2023 World Population Review as the 111th largest city in Wyoming with a population of 248. During those formative years, she threw her leg over many a horse, graduated high school then flew to Brooklyn, NY where she studied flute. After retiring from her career as an orchestral flute player, she found herself back in the saddle: one of those older ladies who hangs out with horses. She’s been a member of the McDonald's All-American High School band, an elementary school music teacher, the principal flute player of the Arizona Opera, a published poet in the anthology What She Wrote, a performer on native American flute, a veterinary technician, and is now a Certified Master Naturalist in the state of Arizona and a docent at Tucson's Mission Garden. She recently returned to the US after a tour to Alamos, Sonora, Mexico, and consequentially fancies herself a bacanora connoisseur. Linda writes poetry and prose and frequently cavorts with the horses and donkeys that wander through her writing. She lives near Tucson, Arizona with her husband, two old noisy cats, and a Mexican street dog. On Sundays, she and her husband drive to Amado, Arizona to visit her retired Arabian horse, Sweet Al.