As told by Tommy Middleditch:
Yep…there was two little burn marks behind his left ear… About the size of a small shirt button I’d guess…Well, old Larry down at the garage says he probably did that his own self, with maybe a hot nail head, you know. No…I couldn’t say, but then again old Freddy has always been a bit odd. Well, nothing too serious like. O.K. well there was that time he took off all his clothes and ran through the bowling alley on Saturday night…Gave all the ladies quite a show that night. Terry…he’s the town cop…threw Fred in jail for the night…claiming he was drunk, but…Fred didn’t drink you know. I figured it was more like that Terry didn’t want the local boys to give Freddy a beating. It all blew over. Then there was the time we found him sleeping in Ida Quinn’s chicken coop…sound asleep on the floor, covered in feathers and chicken shit, with them birds making a hell of a racket. No use speculating about that one. Larry says that he reckoned that Freddy was in love with one of those hens…but you can’t take that stuff seriously…specially since Larry is known to do the odd strange thing himself. Keeps a pistol in his lunch pail…He says “just in case” but it ain’t loaded and we don’t even know if the damn thing works…”Just in case, of what?” . Half the time he forgets his lunch at home anyways…What if “just in case” came along on one of those days?
Never-mind…Anyway, Freddy came in here …must have been back in April of last year…Hair all tangled and twisted up, clothes all knotted up and muddy…dead leaves and twigs sticking to him like he’d been sleeping under ground in some old badger den. His eyes was wild and his teeth was chattering like those clickers them Spanish dancers use, you know. Marty…She’s the girl behind the counter over there. Earl Jones’ girl. Yep…she’s a good kid. Keeps the place going and folks like her. Dropped out of high school last year…but she’s going back next year I hear. Well anyway, Marty was always good with Freddy…got him calmed down and made him some coffee and a slice of apple pie. Well…he practically inhaled that didn’t he? And she got him talking…and he got real spooky then, see. That’s when Charlie and Larry, we were all in here for our morning coffee, see?…that’s when I wanted to send for old doc Crowder. The upshot was that Freddy says he was snatched by these guys from outer space…two days before, and he woke up buried over in the field over by Ida Quinn’s back garden. Says he doesn’t remember anything since Tuesday and he hurts all over but specially behind his ear and he shows us those burn marks.
Of course nobody believes that stuff…no, but it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, you know…He was talking so serious and scared like. Larry asked him what these guys looked like…I guess he was thinking a couple of high-school kids was playing some kind of bad joke on Freddy…and that would have been some bad shit right there, because no matter if he was a little crazy…Freddy …we all like him and we don’t stand for nobody messing with him. If it was a couple of those kids they was in for a serious ass kicking…once Larry found out. But no…Freddy said that they was little guys about four foot or so and they was very strong. They had some sort of mask or helmet so he couldn’t make out their faces and anyway they must have knocked him out pretty quick because that was all she wrote until he woke up, covered in dirt over at Ida’s place.
So I called doc Crowder then because we thought Freddy ought to be looked at. I mean, he looked dirty and had a few scratches and those two burn spots but otherwise he was just about the way he always was. Just the same, it was a pretty spooky story…even for Freddy…so it was possible that the boy had gone and slipped right off the rails this time.
Nope, I don’t know any more than that. Well, doc Crowder took him over town to the clinic and kept him for almost a week and his story never changed. Doc did all kinds of tests and got a shrinker from the city to come and check him out. We was all supposed to keep our mouths shut, according to doc, because the newspapers would come and turn us all into a joke if it got out. Still, Charlie, Larry and the rest of us did go over to Ida’s place and we must have covered every square inch of that field. There was a little ditch, like…looked like it was covered with twigs and old leaves…could have been the place that Freddie woke up…but you couldn’t tell. And there was a round sort of scorch mark on the ground about four feet across, you know, not a real deep burn, but like a lot of things can do that…somebody drops a cigarette…it only takes a spark in the dry season. And Charlie’s brother Ed found an old pocket-knife that he lost a couple of years ago out pheasant hunting. It was all rusted but he kept her anyway…figured he could clean her up. That was it…aside from a few old bottles and rusty cans and a hand full of old shotgun shells…it was just the same old field.
After doc Crowder let Freddie out of the clinic he told his story all over town for about six months…until nearly everybody had heard it at least once. A guy from one of those weekly news-papers they put in the supermarket came and bought Freddy lunch…heard the whole story…took Freddie out to Ida’s place and shot off a bunch of pictures. That was about six months ago…I never saw the story though… I never pick up those papers in the store. Marty…Earl’s girl, said she read the article. She said they made Freddy out to be crazy and the rest of us as hicks who didn’t know a hoax when we saw one. I don’t know about that.
Freddy seemed to settle down after a while. Didn’t do none of his usual crazy stuff. People said it was like he found a new kind of crazy…talking about those little guys out back of Ida’s place. He swore he didn’t know anything about the two lost days and the marks behind his ear. Larry says that’s where the aliens looked inside his head and didn’t find nothing and so they let him go.
Yessir and so, like I said, we all just sort of put it all out of our minds, you know…like they say…life goes on. Well sure…I know people sat out on their porches some nights looking for lights in the sky…like flying saucers…them UFOs? Never heard if anybody saw them.
Well, I don’t know…that was the whole story until a couple of months ago. I expect that’s what all the fuss is about. Yep…two months ago. Yes…well one day he just wasn’t there…Freddy. Up and gone. Not like him at all. Nobody said nothing for a week or so…he doesn’t have kin around here…lives alone across the little river…People don’t like to intrude see. But after a week of not seeing him I think Marty went over there and he wasn’t home…At least he wasn’t in there, sick or…you know…dead. So she must have told Earl and he called the police. I guess they didn’t want to do too much. Freddy was a grown man…free to come and go, you know…But we all had a little meeting and called the police back…got a proper search to look around. And the thing of it is…all his stuff is still out at the house. It’s a mystery now.
It’s just a mystery now. Maybe he’ll turn up with more burns behind the ear…but I don’t know…it worries me…the whole thing does. I don’t think he’ll be back around here anymore…I think Freddy is gone in that flying saucer.
B.C.
06-11-15
Freddy’s Flying Saucer
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