MANDY

Did I ever tell you about the time my cousin abducted an alien?  No, She wasn't abducted, she was the abductor.  Let me fill you in on some of the background first, or you'll never believe it.  What?  Of course it's the truth.  Ya see, I come from South Central Missouri and my wife and I are real close to my cousin Mandy and her husband George.  Well, George and me used to go out drinkin' together.  USED TO are the key words here.  Everything was fine until Mandy got a computer and went on line.  Did you know that there is something like eighty-seven thousand web sights on Voodoo and the Occult?  Well, Sir, I never put much stock in things like that, but down where I come from some people do.  Why just last week I read in our weekly paper where this fella shot another man with a shotgun because he said this fella put a hex on him and he said he had to.  But, that's another story.  Anyway Mandy would stay up late at night whilst me and George  painted the town red - our town, it only takes half a can of paint.  Did I forget to say that was a SMALL can?  Anyhow, she'd be up reading all that Occult stuff 'til all hours.  After a while she started spending time out in the barn, well, 'tweren't really a barn, more like a big shed and George began actin' peculiar like.  He quit drinkin'.  He started cleaning the house.  Makes the neatest bed I ever did see, and his meatloaf is delicious.  But he didn't seem like his old self, hardly.  He walks around lookin', well, confused, like he's in a daze or trance or somethin'.  Ol' Mandy got real peculiar too.  She's a pretty little thing with them big brown eyes . . . .   Ah well.  One night I was walking by their place and I glanced over by the barn and they was these weird lights a flashing through the cracks so I kinda snuck over and took a peek.  Mandy was in their messin' with some odd earthen bowls and mumbling somethin' like Apollo and mojo.  I know a Jimmy Joe, but I never heard a no Moe Joe in these parts.  But then, I don't know everybody.  Well, them bowls was a glowin' and lights was a flashin' and I swear I heard drums and that place smelled awful, or else the wind was a blowin' off the lagoon, no, not the Blue Lagoon.  A lagoon is like a rural sewage treatment plant without the treatment or the plant.  George had to put up a mailbox because the stuff she was ordering off the computer smelled so bad that the guy at the post office threatened to quit if Mandy didn't.  He did not want to have to smell that stuff in her post office box for one more day!

One time when me and my old lady was fightin' I kind of tried to  hit on my cousin a little, you know, keep it in the family, and all that, and I didn't think George would mind, him being so busy with the housework and cooking and all.  I just told her I had a powerful itch for her in a most private place and she just looked at me with those big brown eyes and gave me a kind of slow smile that didn't say 'come on jump my bones', more like 'BOY, who you think you're talkin' to?'  That night I noticed I really did have an itch down there . . .and a rash.  Well I fooled around a couple of days, used a case of calamine lotion, but it wasn't doin' no good, so I went to the doctor over in Waynesville and he said I had poison ivy.  Now I ask you, WHERE would I get poison ivy in the middle of November?  I knew where that itch came from, and I was real careful not to never disrespect Mandy again - besides my wife would have killed me.  What?  Well I'm trying to tell you what all that has to do with aliens.  BE PATIENT !

Shortly after, I'd been reading in the Springfield newspaper about cow mutilations.  People was findin' their cows dead, some with no blood in 'em, and others with pieces missing like they had been surgically removed!  There was talk of flying saucers and such, but I never much believed it.  One day, I was out in the woods and the pastures with Mandy, helping her gather roots and different plants and such that she said she needed, cause it was too cold to go fishin' and hunting season hadn't opened yet.  So anyway we was in the woods at the edge of this pasture when we looked up and saw this little green fellow with some sort of thing-a-ma-bob in his hand, him looking like he was a goin' to a Roswell reunion or something, and he seemed to be taking more than a passing interest in one of our local McDonald's on the hoof.  I didn't know what to do, but Mandy, she looks around and finds this petrified cow puddle with a rope cemented in the middle of it.  She grabs the rope and swings this piece of cow crap, which must have weighed fifteen pounds, over her head three or four times and lets fly with it. It caught this little green fellow right in the back of the head.  He went ass over tea kettle in a cloud of cow crap and dropped the thing he was holding.  It went KAZOOOSH ! And this blue light went shooting out of it and plum split an oak tree right down the middle, like lightning!  Before I could even move, Mandy ran over to this little green guy and wadded him up like last week's newspaper and shoved him in her root bag.  She took that oak splitter and a couple of other things he'd dropped and shoved them in her coat pocket.  I wish I had gotten that lightning machine gun.  I could have sold my chain saw and made a fortune cutting wood, but I still would have to stack and haul it, so I guess it's ok I didn't get it.  About this time we heard a wherry sort of noise and this shiny piece of swamp gas came up over the rise.  About that time, I remembered something real important my wife wanted me to do at home and I left in a hurry.  The next day I went by Mandy's to see what happened.  I don't know what kind of deal she made with those other ones riding in the flying saucer to give back their abducted little green buddy . . . . , but one look at Mandy, and I knew she would never have to buy green eye shadow again !  And those big brown eyes of hers have got a green fire in 'em now.  No around our town, nobody disrespects my cousin.  NOBODY!!

I can't believe you came all the way down here from St. Louis just to check out some tall tale that my cousin Jake has been spreading around.  Well, I'm afraid you made the trip for nothing.  Sure I'll tell you what really happened, but you will have to promise me you won't tell anyone, and, for Lord's sake, NOT to print anything.  It started with my husband and cousin going out drinking till all hours every night.  That isn't all my husband was doing, either.   A woman can always tell when her man has been breeding with some strange heifer. They think they are smart but there are ALWAYS little signs. I decided I needed some respect.  If you don't have money, the only other thing people respect is power, so I set out to get some.  When I'd hear the boys rollin' in at night I made sure I had some weird Occult web sight up on my puter screen. That's like dropping bait in front of a fish's nose to my cousin.  George I took care of in a different way.  I whopped him up side of his head with a cast iron skillet. That straightened his act out right away.

The only thing is, I think I hit him a little too hard.  He hasn't been all-together right since.  Oh, the bit about the magic in the barn?  HA HA!  I know what time Jake cuts by our place, so I arranged a little play for his benefit complete with luminescent paint, strobe lights, and stereo drum music.  The smell?  Oh it must have been the lagoon.  The post office?  That was Limburger cheese I ordered and didn't pick up right away.   Jake's rash?  It really was poison ivy I guess.  I wouldn't tell this to anyone around here but I think Jake is cute in a DUMB sort of way.  Since that rash though, he is scared to look at me crossways, so I don't reckon anything will ever happen though I figure I got one coming just to keep the books straight with George.  The alien thing?  Now that took a lot of time and planning.  I let him smell the bait, now I wanted to set the hook.  Anytime I saw anything about UFO's in the paper I made sure my cousin saw them too, just to get him thinking.  The day before the 'encounter'  I went out to that pasture and set up a dummy made to look like somebody from outerspace.  I wired a stick of dynamite to an oak tree about thirty yards away, set the plunger, and hid it in the tall grass.  Then I staked out a cow nearby.  The next day I got Jake to go with me on the pretext of gathering roots.  The rest is history.  It went like clockwork.  I flung that cow crap at the dummy and stomped on the plunger to set of the dynamite.  KAZOOOSH ! !   KABLAAAM ! !  The sun came out and lit up the fog back in the hollow and it was as if Jake's feet had developed wings.  It's a wonder he didn't set his socks on fire!  A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do !  It sure got me some respect around these parts.  The green?  That's eye shadow.  Got to play the role.  Sorry you came all this way for nothing.  Hope you have a safe trip home. (Mandy felt grim.)

Well Thanks Mrs. Hollister.  NO, it was a pretty good yarn but probably nothing we would be interested in printing.  Say, could you give me some directions? Somebody in Devil's Elbow claims to have seen a UFO, and my editor wanted me to check it out while I was down this way.  HA HA, Yeh, probably more swamp gas.  He got in his Geo and left going carefully down the gravel road avoiding potholes that could swallow his tiny car.  My God, he thought,  her brown eyes really did have green fire in them.  And if that was green eye shadow Maybelline was improving.  She was a beautiful woman, and  he supposed she could be telling the truth.  Her story was much more plausible than that of her cousin Jake's.  EXCEPT . . . .  except for that weird feeling he had while she was explaining, like someone stuck a finger inside his brain and poked around.  CREEPY ! !  Tomorrow I check out Devil's Elbow, but I'm far from being done with you, Mrs. Mandy Hollister, he thought.  That night at the motel his dreams were filled with strange voices and brown eyes that burned with green fire.  He awoke, still tired.  A cup of coffee and breakfast at the Kountry Kitchen should cure that he thought.  He didn't notice the old white rusty pickup that fell in half a mile behind him as he proceeded down the outer road towards Devil's Elbow.  Turn right on the second gravel road.  The bluffs of the Gasconade River and the Little Piney were still rosey with dawn.  The little Geo came over the top of the hill and there in the middle of the road was a white tailed buck!  He jammed on his breaks and cut his wheel to the left, stalling the car.  There was a brilliant flash of blue and the buck dropped like a stone.  What th . . .  his thoughts ended with a second flash of blue.

NIXON "W E E K L Y"   HERALD

THIRTY   POINT   BUCKKILLED   AT   DEVIL'S   ELBOW

Warren Fry, Deputy Sheriff, discovered a thirty point buck, apparently killed by lightning on Wednesday of last week on the second gravel road off the outer road going to Devil's Elbow.  Deputy Fry allowed it was strange that a bolt of lightning should occur on a clear morning, but a thirty point buck in these parts is a rare occurrence too.  Warren mentioned that his sister, Mrs. Alberta Cummings from up north In Mexico, Missouri, was coming to Nixon for a visit with their mother, Mrs. Elmer Fry, who is recovering from the flu.  Also killed by the lightning was Keith Becker, a reporter from St. Louis.

ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH: Veteran reporter Keith Becker was killed yesterday, apparently by a bolt of lightning, while on assignment near Devil's Elbow Missouri.  Also killed was a thirty point white tailed buck. Although the weather was clear, residents reported seeing a bright blue flash and hearing thunder.  Mr. Becker is survived by . . . . . .

Mandy put down the paper.  Man I hated doing that, but I knew he felt me probe his mind.  Well, a girl's got to do . . . . .   The worst part is, deer aren't in season and I had to leave the buck ! !

The        End