Before a microphone: “Sir, so you say you were abducted by aliens?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” says Harold Golt in Tony Lama boots, his daddy’s boots: resoled, real rattlesnake skin.
“Tell us about it.”
“On U.S. Route 158, outside of Sprayberry, still in Glasscock County, I’m driving my…”
“Your pick up?”
“No, my Honda CRV.”
“Please continue.”
“I’s so drunk, open beer in the car and what not; I pulled over on the shoulder of the road ’cause I thought I was fixin’ to pass out from alcohol constipation.”
“Consumption?”
“No, Sapporo, it’s a Japanese beer. So, I come to with a hangover, headache and cotton mouth elevated to a common hawthorn.”
“What did the space saucer look like?”
“Like a sex toy without batteries.”
“Which kind?”
“The ones with the little cat on them, but Ds, not nine volt.”
“No, the sex toy.”
“Oh. Like a pregnant onion cactus on the end of an Osage stick. It’s made out of surgical latex and such condemn material. You can buy one at the Gas City gasohol station in Garden City, off of Private Road 3010 in the men’s bathroom.”
“The insides—what does it look like?”
“Well, no mirror, but a hot air hand dryer, one toilet, no stall door, one urinal…”
“No, the interior of the spaceship.”
“I thought you’d never ask. All kinds of mechanicals. Pretty and such. Like Quinceañera, flowers. Understand? All in metal but soft to the touch, like Russulas mushrooms. I hear faint music like a church organ, real nice. The flying saucer smelled of making cornbread, all sugar and melted butter. All kinds of shapes, too, not just squares and circles and rectangles. I thought of seashells. My step-auntie in Galveston collects seashells, puts them all on a coffee table. Used to play with ’em as a kid, the starfishes, conch, bivalves.”
“What did the aliens look like?”
“Cocksure, like bee moths; wax worms, but turquoise.”
“Did you at anytime try to converse or communicate with them?”
“I straight told them no Sodom and Gomorrah, my exact words. They seemed disappointed.”
“Disappointed?”
“I’ve seen V—The Final Battle, the unedited version. I know what goes on behind the bead curtains.”
“They had bead curtains?”
“What I liken to lava lamps too, and bean bag chairs. And then I pull out a deck of cards. Teach them earth enjoyments.”
“Texas Hold ’Em?”
“No, Go-Fish.”
“What happened next?”
“Shucks. I had a flask with me, So. Co., hundred proof. We all got to sipping.”
“You got the aliens drunk?”
“Ends like this. I get the bad feeling one of them aliens is cheating at Go-Fish. I can’t believe I done it, but I done it. I took a swing at one. Roundhoused him, but my fist goes clear by and by through its skull. Exploded watermelon is all I can say.”
“You murdered one of the aliens?”
“It wasn’t E.T. I’s surrounded by ’em.”
“How’d you escape?”
“Prayer. Prayer, and I woke up back on earth two hundred yards from my car in a field of sorghum with my pants around my ankles, all sorts of bruises on my body like hickies and love bites, and I know the aliens’ mouths did that to me. But this’s the kicker: my Tony Lama boots is missing gone, and then is when I know why the aliens come for my ostrich quill cowboy boots.”
“But sir, you’re still wearing cowboy boots.”
“Behindhand, you can be cocksure, hoecakes and hominy. Well, I didn’t tell you how I got ‘em back.
“My name’s Harold Golt, and I am the Abilene Abduction.”