FEUD OF THE WORLDS by MARCO PALMER (books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📖

above their coal–black eyes is a big fat pink rear end with cheeks split right down the middle and most dee-stubin’ of all there was a hole smack dab in the middle of the split and I’s too modest to say what that part-ik-a-loor feature reminds me of. Now their face and below their snakey eyes is all flat ‘cept for two slits for a nose and in place of a mouth there somethin’ like a beard, but it ain’t hair – more like curly pink pig tails hangin’ down where the mouth oughta be. As strange lookin’ as they were, I was surprised to see they was a wearin’ clothes sim-lar to the clothes of us mountain men; they was wearin’ somethin’ like our britches and over-all blue jeans but these was a lot more shiny and sparkly and like somethin’ a faggot might wear.

So anyways, these two weird aliens comes out the door of the space ship, and they kind-a slides down the beam of light. I also oughta mention they’s a carryin’ long see-through hoses which they drags with em’ in their froggy hands. Those wicked aliens then stick the hoses inta the helpless heifer. The next awful thing


8)

we see is red blood bein’ sucked out of the cow and goin up the hoses back into the space ship while the cow kinda dee-flates like a balloon and then right there in midair it dies.


Shakin’ like I was in church, I stutters, “H-H-Holy sn-sn-snakes and h-h-holy sh-sh-shakes, I never seen such a terrible sight. ‘Pology Lamentations. I reckoned it was you Cartwrights doin’ that to all our cows, but nows we knows it’s aliens!”

Lamentations Cartwright then replies, “Pardon me fer sayin’ this Hosea, but those there aliens look like your oldest boy Shibboleth.”

I replies, “Just because Shibboleth has a head like my hairy pink hiney durnt mean nothin’. Thats like sayin’ my boy Amos there is a Cartwright just because he has red hair and freckles.”

Lamentations can’t find the words to say which I don’t blame him for, cuz he’s a Cartwright and can’t help but bein’ a bit dim.

“Er… Um… Er… ” he hems and haws, and then all solemn-like he says, “Hosea in all seriousness, and on a stack of Bibles guarded by diamondbacks do you know if sweet Gomer-Sue...”

I take offence and say, “That’s Missus Tanner to you.”

”Pologies,” says Lamentations, “Has er, Missus Tanner ever met up with them thar aliens before?”


9)


While we’s conversin’, the aliens go find themselves another cow and do the same abom-ee-nubble thing to it.

Now before I answers Lamentations, I’s reminded of a fib Gomer-Sue told me way back when, just after we was first hitched. Course, I didn’t marry Gomer-Sue for her truthfulness. I married her cuz she was the purtiest dang Philly to ever come out of Logan County and she was good for breedin’ children with a chance of bein’ smart. Even after all the babies she done had, she still looked like she was in her prime. Some womenfolk – especially Cartwright womenfolk – should be covered up with lots of clothes fer modesty sake, and maybe even burlap sacks o’er their heads wouldn’t hurt – but Gomer-Sue was always easy on the eyes and did justice to tight shorts and a polka-dot top. Speakin’ of her top, whenever she was a comin’ round a corner, her chest would arrive a second or two before the rest of her and she needed such a chest for the ‘mount of children she’d be feedin’. Yep, Gomer-Sue was as purty as an angel, ‘specially with her long curly gold hair, but boy oh boy, she could lie like the devil.


Right. So as I was sayin’ ‘bout the fib, - one day Gomer-Sue goes away to cousin Meriam’s to do some quiltin’ but she never shows up there and don’t come back till after midnight. So there I is, rockin’ in a chair on the porch, smokin’ a pipe and stewin’ like squirrels in a pot o’ varmint soup. Then I sees Gomer-Sue a comin’ tip-toein’ through the yard, stepping over the pigs and tryin’ not to dee-strub the goats, chickens or the dogs. I then su-prizes her and says, “Where you been Gomer-Sue?”


10)

She jumps and cries, “Mercy, Hosea you frightened me!”

”What you doin’ traipsin’ ‘bout in the middle o’ the night?” I asks.

Gomer-Sue saunters ‘round behind me, wraps her arms ‘round my chest and starts a rubbin. Talkin’ as sweet as honey, she says, “Were you waitin’ up for lil’ ol’ me?”

“As a matter of fact I was,” says I. “A man wants his lovin’, and unlike the Cartwrights, there’s nothin’ in this yard that’ll do.”

I then takes her hands away, and I turns ‘round and looks her square in the eye, sayin’, “Where in tarnation was you?”

Gomer-Sue turns her back and starts a sobbin’.

“If I told you what happened to me tonight you wouldn’t believe me,” she says, boo-hooin’ all the while. Then she up and tells me the biggest fib I ever done heard. She hollers, “I was kidnapped by aliens from outer space!”

“Gomer-Sue” I says, “You’ve told some whoppers in your time but this one’s a doozy – maybe the dooziest of ‘em all.”

“For once I’m tellin’ you the truth Hosea!” she says, and she looks like she means it. “If I was a lyin’ I’d make up somethin’ that sounded half way true. So why would I make somethin’ so crazy like this up?”

“I don’t know Gomer-Sue,” says I. “Maybe you ain’t right in the head like Uncle Obadiah.”


11)


“Do you wanna hear my story or be knocked up side the head with a two-by-four?” says Gomer Sue, threatenin’ violence.

“Go on, tell your story,” I laughs.

“This is what happened,” she says. “I was on my way to go a quiltin’ when this space ship shows up over Cousin Ezekiel’s cow pasture - It was a glowin’ and I swears it looks just like a moonshine still. All of a sudden, I’m blinded by a light brighter than the sun, and I feels myself goin’ up in the air. The next thing I knows, I’m inside their space ship, and the aliens is a havin’ a hoe-down.” After sayin’ all this, Gomer-Sue goes on to tell me how the aliens look and it’s like I already done spelled out for you. “They made moonshine out of cow blood and fermentin’ grain they take from our fields,” says Gomer-Sue. “They was a dancin’ ‘round me, playin’ strange fiddles and such-like and drinkin’ the red moonshine from see-through jugs, but since they didn’t have mouths as such they pours the moonshine down that – that hole in the middle o’ their heads that shouldn’t oughta be there - and they used that same hole for singin’, hummin’ and whistlin’. All the whiles I’s strapped down to a couple of hay-bails. I mean you’d think with a space ship it would be all fancy gadgets and such but their space ship is dirty like a barn with hay, straw and saw dust all over the floor. They hooks me up with tubes and wires and this is the part I can’t git out o’ my head – they ‘sperimented on me and probed me every which way fer hours and hours.” Gomer-Sue closed her eyes and moaned.

I don’t know why I asks cuz I don’t believe a word of it, but I says, “Did them aliens hurt you? Was you in pain Gomer-Sue?”


12)

“Pain nothin?” she says, “I never had such a pleasurable ‘sperience in all my life and I’ll never be satisfied with an Earth man ever again.”

Anyways, that was the big fib I remembers, although now I’m a thinkin’ it might not have been a fib and in answer to the question Lamentations posed, I turns to him and says, “As I recollect, Gomer-Sue did say somethin’ about aliens but I thought it was all hogwash.”

“Did she say something about never bein’ satisfied by an Earth man again?” asks Lamentations.

“How did you know that?” I asks.

“Er, um,” stutters Lamentations, “That’s what they all says who tells these stories ‘bout bein’ taken by the aliens. And then didn’t you ‘spect nothin’ when Shibboleth came along later?”

That brought to mind the day Shibboleth was born. I was a pacin’ outside the house, worried and panicked by the amount o’ screamin’ comin’ from Gomer-Sue – and then when it’s all quiet, Granny Tanner comes out holdin’ a babe wrapped in a blanket. Granny’s face says it all and her face weren’t pleasant at the best of times.

“Hosea, I don’t know how to tell you this any other way but say it straight, plain and simple,” says Granny while puffin’ on her corn-cob pipe.
“I’d drown it if I was you. Yer a father. A father of what I can’t say, cuz this baby ain’t normal.”


13)


Fearin’ the worst, I say, “Ain’t normal? What’s wrong with it?”

Granny then hands me the little bundle, and when I opens the blanket there’s a baby that looks like the aliens from Gomer-Sue’s story, and I’s hor-ee-fied and struck dumb. Baby Shibboleth then looks up at me with his buggy black eyes and speaks out the hole in his gigantic head sayin’ “Are you my Pa? Boy howdy, It’s nice to finally meet y’all. I done listened to your voices from inside my mama and done learned to speak like y’all.”

Even though the boy was ugly as sin, he made up for it by bein’ the smartest chile anyone ever come across, and soon he was fixin’ farm machinery and makin’ things like the giant moonshine still he’s been a workin’ on for the last three years. He weren’t never any trouble. The only rules we asked him to ‘bide by was not talking out that hole in his head if he could help it and we asks him to wear a ten gallon hat, cuz to be honest and to my everlastin’ disgrace, I’s ashamed o’ Shibboleth.

Rememberin’ all this, I says to Lamentations, “I just figured that alien story Gomer-Sue told me might a been a dream, a vision, a prem-nition to prepare us for Shibboleth, cuz it was temptin’ to throw such a deformed child in the river.”

No sooner had I replied when Lamentations starts makin’ a fuss and waving his arms about. He points out to the field and says, “Hosea! Ain’t that Gomer-Sue - er Missus Tanner?”


14)


Shore ‘nuff, we sees Gomer-Sue runnin’ cross the field toward the space ship and she’s a shoutin’ “TAKE ME! TAKE ME! PROBE ME! ‘SPERIMENT ON ME!”


“Why that shameless hussy!” says I just as she’s sucked up into the space ship. “That’s my woman they done took! You are my witnessess! Them aliens are the one who started this feud! They mutee-lated our cows and flattened our crops! And I suggest we show them that on Earth we don’t tolee-rate this kind-a behaviour! Who’s with me?”

All the Tanners and even the Cartwrights whooped and hollered and threw their hats in the air.

“Then let’s take the feud to them!” I shouts.

All us mountain men then hops over that fence and ran into that cow pasture, shootin’ our rifles up at that space ship. We even heard the bullets ricochet off the big floatin’ still.