Still in his ratty flannel bathrobe, he’d waited up for us by the entry gate to his compound, sprawled out in a lawn chair with a Coleman lantern and his wimpy hound-dog Tooth for company. As soon as he’d spotted us, Garth had hit the remote to open the barbed-wire topped gate, and Earl had driven Bessie on through.
We’d all gathered back inside the RV, where I was busy seesawing between kicking myself for being such a fool, and celebrating that I’d escaped the fate of becoming a space alien’s exotic, mail-order bride.
“Yes, network marketing,” Grayson said, handing Garth the robe Earl had been given. “Take a look for yourself. It’s one of those pyramid schemes. I’m sure of it.”
Garth’s crusty eyes widened. “KFC? I didn’t know they were into—”
“Read the small print,” I said.
Garth pushed his dark nerd frames up on his nose. “Kristie’s Frickin’ Crullers?”
“Yes,” Grayson said. “Sorry to disappoint you, Operative Garth. But from what I saw, it appears the ‘aliens’ are actually a group of hapless recruits taking part in team-building exercises for a new line of donut shops.”
“But the white robe,” Garth said.
“Yeah,” I said sourly. “Not exactly the world’s most thoroughly thought through marketing strategy. They’ll show every chocolate smear and greasy fingerprint stain.”
“I kinda like stains,” Earl said. “Reminds me a what I ate. You know, like a scrapbook, only of meals.”
Garth glanced at Earl, then leaned over and whispered to me. “What did they do to him?”
I sighed and whispered back. “Nothing. Unfortunately, that’s Earl in normal mode.”
“But that haircut,” Garth said. “Did he undergo some kind of horrible initiation?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Self-inflicted.”
Earl frowned and ran a hand through his uneven bangs. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Everything,” I said. “I told you to quit going to that weird guy hanging around the old FotoHut in the IGA parking lot.”
Earl pouted. “But Bubba’s the only one who still cuts hair for catfish.”
Garth blanched. “Are you saying a human did that to him?”
“Ahem,” Grayson cleared his throat. “If I could interrupt this little beauty consultation for a moment, I’d like to get back to the issue at hand.”
“Donuts?” Earl asked.
Grayson’s scholarly expression skipped a beat. “No. I’m referring to the fact that we’re back to square one in explaining what’s happened to Jimmy and Wade.”
“Wade Parker?” Garth asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “If he’s the cousin of a waitress named Thelma at Juanita’s Casa del Tacos.”
“Yeah. That’s him,” Garth said. “That’s the friend Jimmy went fishing with. The one he told me he was looking for—right before he started acting all weird himself.”
“Like a murderer, you mean?” Grayson asked.
“No!” Garth frowned and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Are you sure those robed guys weren’t aliens? What about that weird message Jimmy left? You know, ‘Christ. It’s Frickin’ Krull’?”
Grayson pursed his lips. “As you recall, the message was garbled. I’m afraid we may have misinterpreted Jimmy saying, ‘Kristie’s Frickin’ Crullers.’”
“You think?” I said sourly.
“But what about the portal?” Garth argued, sounding vaguely disappointed. “And the alien ship you spotted?”
My ears flushed with heat. I glanced over at Grayson, wondering how he was going to explain this one.
Grayson cleared his throat. “Ahem. Well, Operative Garth, after further examination of the scene ...”
In other words, as the three of us scrambled through the woods back toward the monster truck...
“...it became apparent that the phenomenon we interpreted as an intergalactic portal ...”
...the glowing ring of reddish-orange light we saw in the woods...
“...may have actually been the view of a distant illumination source as partially obstructed by a structure of man-made origin.”
...was debunked when Earl banged his head on something that rang like a gong. We’d turned around and were surprised to see the distant glow of the robed guys’ bonfire outlining the silhouette of an abandoned propane tank like a glowing orange ring.
“So ... there wasn’t any spaceship?” Garth asked.
“Nope. Just a rusty ol’ gas tank,” Earl said.
“But the hieroglyphics you mentioned,” Garth argued.
“Graffiti,” I said.
“Yep.” Earl snickered. “Somebody done wrote, ‘Eat a wiener,’ on it.”
Grayson cleared his throat again. “I believe the correct phrase was, ‘Eat my wiener.’”
Garth’s face collapsed. “But your Medusa-headed monster,” he said, turning to me.
I winced. “Turns out, it was the exposed root ball of a pine tree. And the Conehead was just one of those robed guys.”
Garth stared at us for a moment, mouth agape, red nose dripping.
I turned to Grayson and shook my head. “Poor guy. How could we have gotten this sooo wrong?”
Grayson shrugged. “Actually, what happened here is a rather common occurrence. Eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable, Drex. Especially under duress. I think what we have here is a case of weapon focus.”
My nose crinkled. “Weapon focus?”
“Yes. It’s a psychological phenomenon in which a witness focuses in on one feature, such as a weapon, causing all other details to become blurred. In your case, Drex, it was obviously your typical hyper-emotional reactivity that caused your memory distortions.”
Earl laughed. “So what you’re sayin’, Mr, G., is that the thought of them fellers in robes bein’ aliens scared ol’ Bobbie outta her gourd.”
“Less eloquent than I would have put it, but yes,” Grayson said.
I glared at Earl. “So, then what’s your excuse, jerk-wad?”
Earl’s head tilted sideways. “For seeing Coneheads, you mean?”
“No,” I grumbled. “For being out of your gourd!”
I turned to Grayson. “You saw aliens, too. Admit it!”
Grayson shrugged. “Like I said. The stress of disturbing situations can make one highly confident of one’s visual accuracy, despite facts to the contrary. In actuality, Drex, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ reality. There is only the one we decide to either accept or agree on.”
“Yeah, right, Mr. Mumbo-Jumbo,” I hissed.
I walked over and grabbed a bag of candy from the kitchen counter. “So, what are we gonna do now with fifty pounds of Reese’s Pieces, Einstein?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
With the threat of alien probes removed from the equation and a bottle of Boone’s Farm implanted in my gut, I crashed into bed and slept like a baby. But, unfortunately, my
