Alien Mark

WHEN I WAS young there were three things my grandmother loved to do: sunbathe, smoke her tobacco pipe, and tell me stories about the Red Planet.

“Make me my pipe and I will tell you a story about the Red Planet,” she would say to me. “My eyes are beginning to dim and I don’t want to spill the tobacco all over myself.”

I would make her the pipe. I packed the aromatic tobacco tightly into the pipe the way she preferred it. She did not like to light her pipe with safety matches so I had to go to the kitchen and scoop burning pieces of charcoal with her metal gong the way she taught me to do it. She would nimbly pick up the coal with thumb and forefinger without a wince and drop it into her pipe. She would draw the pipe and slowly let the smoke through her nostrils. Her craggy face soon became relaxed and only then would she start telling me one of her stories.

“When the earth was still very young,” she would begin.

“How do you mean young, Grandma?”

“So young one had to walk slowly and gingerly like a chameleon otherwise the earth would cave in.”

“The earth was that young?” I asked.

“Yes, so young you did not need a hoe to dig the soil. You simply scooped up the dark earth with your hands before planting your crops.”

I placed my foot on the earth and pressed. It felt firm.

“That must be a really