ALIEN ENCOUNTER 

Part 3

Deputy Polydore

 

6:32 AM, Tuesday, 19 April 1966, Alligator, the road between the swamp and the school.

The morning twilight has started, and the sky is slowly changing from reddish to yellow.
Edna Trahan thinks about how Savannah has changed and is doing very well at school since Christmas. While steering her car down the road, her mind shifts. She starts imagining a large cup of coffee waiting for her at school.
But then, all of a sudden, a flash of green light from the swamp blinds her. She puts her right hand over her eyes, her foot finds the brake, and the car slides to the left and stops short of falling into the swamp. Edna blinks a couple of times, but she is unable to focus her eyes. Her hand fumbles, but then she finds the car key, turns off the engine, and pulls the hand brake. She blinks and puts her right hand over her eyes. Slowly, her heartbeat goes back to normal, and she opens her eyes. She still sees everything like it would be lit up by powerful lamps, so she reaches over, opens the glove compartment, and takes out her sunglasses. Once she has them on, she takes a deep breath and opens the car door. Still confused and disoriented, she steps out and looks around. Far away, inside the swamp, some strange green and blue lights dance around. They fly from one side to the other and up and down. Edna leans forward with her mouth wide open, lifts her sunglasses up, but then quickly pulls them back down when she is blinded by the light again.
“Someone is moving around in there,” she whispers. Her heartbeat goes up, and she feels like someone has just dropped ice cubes inside her blouse. Edna shivers, frightened, breathing deeply, and decides to get back into the car as quickly as she can.
She slams the door shut, locks all the doors, and raises all the car windows. Her hand trembles when she turns the car key. The engine starts but then dies. Edna quickly glances at the tall shadows that move around and the dancing lights. She turns the car key again and again. The engine is dead. Sweat pours from her forehead, and she slams her fist on the dashboard in desperation. “Dammed! Dammed engine! Come on, start! For God’s sake!” Nothing happens.
Just as she is about to get out of the car and run, the radio starts and plays the Rolling Stones' “Paint it black” at full volume. The headlights turn on, and there’s a roar from the powerful engine. Edna puts the car in reverse, releases the hand brake, and steps on the gas pedal. The car comes back up on the road. First gear goes in, and the tires spin for a second on the gravel before they get a grip.
Edna glances at the rear mirror and screams.
Two gigantic, black shadows are standing on the road where she had been just seconds ago. One of them holds something in his hand, lifts it, and points it at her.

Edna steps on the brakes, and the car stops in the parking lot just in front of the school. If it hadn’t been for that bend on the road that saved her from the red light that was coming from the thing the black shadow held in his hand, she would probably not be looking at the well-known white, wooden walls of the school where she has been teaching for the last ten years.
Her hands tremble when she loosens her grip on the steering wheel and turns off the engine. Then she looks at the dashboard clock, which shows that it’s 7:46 AM. “It can’t be! It’s only a ten-minute drive from where I saw those lights. “What happened?” For a minute, she stares at the clock, but then she reacts, the pupils are soon coming, and she needs to tell the school director what has happened.

When she walks up the stairs to the entrance, she decides that never again in her life will she drive to school early to prepare for classes. From now on, she will prepare all the classes in the safety of her home.
She pushes open the entrance door, enters the hallway, and, after walking as fast as she can, reaches the director’s door. Edna takes a deep breath, wishes she had a mirror to see how she looks, and then she knocks on the door. She doesn’t wait for an answer but storms in, “Director Thompson! Something happened on the road!”
“What the hell!” Thompson almost drops his cup on the table, manages to regain balance, and as fast as he can, he shuts the drawer where he hides a magazine with lightly dressed women.
Edna, observant as she is, after being a teacher for so long, saw the title page of the publication, but her mind is on what happened on the road. “I, I, there were some lights, then, a stick, two black shadows, and, and, time just disappeared!”
“Calm down!” Thompson puts his cup on the desk, “Miss Trahan, get some coffee and tell me what happened.”
“I don’t want any dammed coffee!” She screams with a hysterical voice.
“Dammed? You, this is the first time ever that I hear you swear.”
“Time stopped, disappeared, I, I don’t,” Edna looks around and fixes her eyes on the electric coffee brewer, “I’ll have a dammed coffee!” She walks over to the brewer, fills a cup, and throws in two spoons of sugar. Then she sits down on the bench that’s to the right side of the office. She forgets to stir the coffee and drinks half of it. Her eyes stare into the wall on the other side of the office, and then she drinks some more.
“Are you feeling better now?”
Edna looks at Thompson and nods.
Thompson knows by the look in her eyes that she must be in a state of shock, so he tries to speak as calmly as he possibly can, “Miss Trahan, drink your coffee and then we’ll talk about what happened.”
Edna jumps up from the bench, waves her left hand, and is about to say something.
Thompson holds up his right hand to stop her, “Take your time, take your time. You have all day to explain what happened.”
Edna sits down and drinks some more coffee.

The noise of kids fighting, girls laughing, and cars arriving tells Thompson that classes are about to commence, so he turns to Miss Trahan, “You wait here. I’ll go and tell the other teachers that you won’t give any classes today because you’re not feeling well.”
Edna nods and watches him leave.

When Thompson returns to this office, he finds that Edna has straightened out her dress and has regained her normal, efficient self.
He smiles at her, “Coffee does wonders, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Do you want some more?”
Edna nods and holds out her cup. Thompson takes it, fills it up, but doesn’t put in any sugar as there is already enough in the cup, stirs it, and hands Edna the cup. Then he walks over to his desk, sits down, and unscrews his fountain pen. “Now, Miss Trahan, could you please, calmly, explain what happened to you on the road?”
Edna sips on her coffee, sighs, and takes a deep breath, “You won’t believe me, but I…”
“I know you go to church every Sunday, so I’ll believe you,” Thompson smiles at her.
Edna slowly starts to tell Thompson what happened. When she finishes, Thompson looks at the paper, puts down the fountain pen, and scratches his neck. “Did you know that the Houma Courier had a small article about some fishermen observing strange lights in the swamp a couple of days ago?”
Edna shakes her head without saying anything.
“Maybe it could be someone who had an accident and is trying to draw attention to the, how should I say, situation. Yes, that’s the word, situation.”
“And the black shadows? How about them?”
“Black people fishing. Maybe he had a fishing rod in his hand?”
Edna glances to the left. Now she knows that Thompson doesn’t believe her. “That could be an explanation,” she whispers.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“That could be an explanation!” Edna looks up and tries to smile. But the smile turns into some uncontrolled lip movements.
“And I think that the,” he looks down at the paper, follows the lines with his finger, and then looks at Edna with a smile. “That thing about the time disappearing, it could be,” he doesn’t have time to finish because Edna stands up.
“It could be that the dashboard clock doesn’t work correctly.” Edna walks over to the coffee brewer and puts down her cup next to it. “Mr. Thompson, I will give my classes today,” she says with a determined voice.
“Will you?”
“Yes, of course. Maybe what happened is that I got confused and…”
“Do you read a lot, novels, I mean?”
Edna nods.
“You know that one’s imagination is always strongest at the twilight hours, dawn, sunset.”
Inside Edna is like a volcano, ready to erupt, but she decides to be quiet. If people believe that she has gone crazy, she could lose her job here, and she likes to teach at this quiet school. “I’m sure that you’re right about that. We women, have a lively imagination.”
Thompson draws a deep breath, “That’s why NASA sends well-drilled men, officers, into space. They won’t…”
“Won’t let their imagination interfere with the mission.”
“Exactly!” Thompson scratches his chin, “However, I would like to call the Sheriff and tell him that you saw the lights. If the Houma Courier says that other people saw them too, something, well, something must be there in the swamp.”
“And the other things?”
“Well, I won’t bother to tell you that you saw two black people with a fishing rod or that your car’s clock doesn’t work correctly.”
“No, you’re right about that. Why bother him with such details?”
Thompson stands up and stretches out his hand to Edna, “You know that I think that you’re the best teacher around here. I’ll stand for that!”
“Thank you, I don’t know what to say, I…”
“Never mind! You go and look after your class, and I’ll call that, well, that…”
Edna knows that Thompson hates Sheriff Lamar for trying to prevent integration at the school a couple of years ago. “The local law enforcement!”
“I couldn’t have said it better!”

Edna Trahan closes the door after her, assuring herself never to talk about what happened, write it down in her diary, and drive up to Houma on Saturday instead of Sunday and get a gun.
Meanwhile, Thompson, the school director, glances at the drawer where the magazine with the lightly dressed women is hidden, but finally decides that he has to call the Sheriff’s Office. He picks up the receiver, flips to the pages marked in red in his agenda, where he has written down all the important emergency numbers. Even the man he hates the most in the slow, peaceful town of Alligator, the man who threatened to turn his life into a living hell when he had decided to implement the decision to desegregate the schools after 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walked into a school escorted by three US Marshals, is listed there. No other than Sheriff Butch Lamar. Thompson spins the disc. There’s a click in the receiver after each number and then a buzzing tone.

“Sheriff’s Office, what can I do for you?” Deputy Polydore has his feet on the desk, yawns, and reclines back into Sheriff Lamar's chair. There’s some noise on the line, but then the other voice comes through.
“Thompson, school director here, I want to report a strange incident.”
Polydore takes his feet off the desk and looks at the receiver, then he answers. “What do you want?” his voice is hostile.
“Hum, do you know a Miss Trahan, teacher at our school?”
There’s a moment of silence before Polydore answers, “Isn’t that the, the woman that is a faithful practitioner of the Catholic faith?”
“That’s the one!”
“So, what happened?” Polydore looks at the coffee brewer, imagining a large, hot coffee.
“Well, Miss Trahan has reported to me, hum, that she saw some strange lights in the swamp on her way to school this morning. She, hum, always arrives very early to, hum, prepare classes.”
“And?”
“She, hum, told me that on her way here, on that stretch that passes by the swamp, hum, she observed some, kind of, hum, strange lights.”
“Strange lights?” Polydore yawns and looks up at the ceiling, wishing that the man would hang up.
“Do you read the Houma Courier?”
“Huh?” Polydore blinks, “What do you mean?”
“I, well, the Houma Courier had an article a couple of days back, saying something about strange lights, and we, hum, I mean, she thinks it could be some kind of a distress signal.”
There’s a moment of silence. Polydore straightens up and takes out a paper and a pen from the first drawer, “Could you please repeat what you just said?”
“Distress signal.”
“Distress signal, why?”
“I, well, hum, suppose that someone, might, possibly, could have got stuck in the swamp.”
Polydore spits into the trash bin, “You know what? That kind of sounds like horse shit to me! We all know our way around the swamp here.”
“And if it was someone who had come from the other side?”
“What the hell do you mean by the other side? From outer space? The Berlin Wall? What?” Polydore looks at the coffee brewer again, wondering why the idiot doesn’t hang up.
“I, they might have come from Dulac.” Thompson waits for a moment, “You know, they went fishing, and they got stuck in the swamp. Possibly, how would I say, tourists. Yes, those people that…”
“Come here to fish?”
“Exactly! Couldn’t have said it better!” Thompson is smiling on his side of the telephone line.
Polydore looks at the clock that’s hanging on the wall next to the weapons safe, scratches his neck, looks back at the clock, looks at the shiny, cylindrical, metal container next to the brewer, stares at the receiver for a second, and then answers, “Okay! I’ll tell the Sheriff that you called, and he, possibly, if it’s interesting enough, might, just might, call you back. To ask for additional information. Do you understand?”
Thompson is silent for a moment. “Well, yes, I understand,” he quickly hangs up and blinks twice.
Polydore listens to the buzz, spits into the trash bin again, and hangs up. After looking at the coffee brewer for a couple of seconds, he gets up, fills it with coffee and water, and pushes the switch. He glances at the clock; he still has at least ten, fifteen minutes before Sheriff Lamar will turn up, so he goes back to the chair, puts his dusty boots on the table, and starts dreaming about winning the State Lottery and retiring to Rio de Janeiro. All of his yellow teeth become visible when he remembers seeing those wonderful pictures from the Copacabana beach in a Times magazine last time he went for a haircut up in Houma.
His smile reaches from ear to ear when, in his imagination, the hundreds of thousands of dollars have just become a million. He sighs and relaxes even more when the smell of newly brewed coffee fills the Sheriff’s Office. But then he jumps up, looks around, grabs an old newspaper, and sweeps the dust from his boots off the desk.

The Chevrolet turns up a large dust cloud as it violently stops in front of the office. The engine roars a last time, and then the sound dies away. There’s a click when the car door opens, and a pair of Chippewa boots lands on the gravel. Lamar’s Swiss cheese coloured hat lands on his crew cut head, and he slams the car door shut. He looks around, adjusts his gun belt, spits on the ground, listens to the birds, and bites his lower lip, “Lord, give me a nice, quiet day, with no race riots, drugged hippies, or, you know what I mean. Amen.” Happy with his everyday prayer, he walks up to the porch and sniffs a couple of times, “Jeez, that’s freshly brewed coffee!” A smile appears on his lips that are so thin that they look like they have been drawn with a pencil. But then his eyes wander from left to right to make sure that everything is alright at the office. The flag is hoisted, and the porch is clean. Satisfied, he turns the doorknob and steps into his office.
Polydore straightens up when he sees Lamar at the door.
“Anything to report, Deputy?” Lamar takes off his hat and walks up to his desk, where he puts it in the same place where he has put it for the last twelve years.
“Nothing at all, bugs made some noise, all night, as usual, but, well, I got some sleep on the couch in the cell.”
“Let’s keep it that way!” Lamar pats Polydore on his shoulder when he walks past him to the electric coffee brewer, fills his mug, which has the Confederate flag on it, throws in two cubes of sugar, picks up a spoon, and stirs the coffee. Once he’s seated, he has a sip of coffee, puts down the mug on the desk, scratches his chin, and looks at Polydore, “So everything was all nice and quiet as always.”
Polydore swallows, makes some strange sounds, looks at the clock, and takes a deep breath. “Sheriff, hum, there was a,” Polydore stops for a second. “A, hum, well, phone call,” he spits out the last word.
“Phone call?” Lamar puts his finger on the mug to see if the coffee has cooled down enough to have a drink. “Who called?”
“Thompson. The director of the school, you know?”
Lamar leans back into his chair, forgets about the coffee, and puts his right thumb inside his gun belt, just next to his large 44’ Python, “That, how would I say, that, the radical, that thinks it’s right for both blacks and whites to go to the same school, he called?”
“Ah, yes, that is right, Sheriff,” Polydore scratches his neck when he remembers how Lamar had threatened Thompson a couple of years back. “Yes! Exactly! That, that, teacher, I!
Lamar holds up his left hand, lifts his Confederate mug, and drinks some hot coffee. He looks down into the mug and then back up at Polydore, “What the heck did he want?”
“Uh, yeah, right, he wanted to report that… Do you know who Miss Trahan is, Sheriff?”
“Of course I do,” Lamar has another sip of coffee. “She’s, apparently, a good Catholic woman who drives up to Houma every Sunday to attend mass at San Francisco Cathedral,” Lamar pulls out his right thumb from the gun belt, puts down the mug with his left hand, and leans forward. “So, what does that have to do with Thompson calling here?”
Polydore quickly tells him what Thompson told him on the telephone. “Now, Sheriff, I told him that if you found it worth investigating, you would call him back.”
Lamar thinks for a moment, finishes his coffee, puts down the cup, and looks at the notes that Polydore took. For a second, he is quiet, but then he nods, “Deputy, you did the right thing.”
Polydore takes a deep breath and releases the air slowly.

Thompson looks at the telephone when it rings. He waits a moment before picking it up. “Thompson, school director here.”
“You reported to my Deputy that one of your teachers had seen some strange lights in the swamp, is that right?”
Thompson listens to Lamar’s barking, waits, and then answers, “Yes, Miss Trahan. She told me that she had seen some lights that were dancing around in the swamp.”
“Dancing around?”
“Yes, she thought that it might be a distress signal.”
“How come?”
“A couple of days ago, the Houma Courier had a small article about some local fishermen, who had also seen those lights and, hum, we think that something must be there.”
“Something that shouldn’t be there?”
“Maybe.”
“Did she say something else?”
Thompson looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes. For a second, he imagines something dangerous in the swamp, something that could hurt the children at his school. He opens his eyes, “She said that she had been blinded by a light, a strong light, and her car almost slid down into the swamp.”
“Blinded? Strong light?”
“Yes, and when she could see again, she saw some large, she described them as shadows, that were moving around in the swamp, close to the lights and…”
“Shadows? How large?”
“Like tall men.”
Lamar mumbles something inaudible.
“And that she had gotten scared. After all, this was just at daybreak. Her car didn’t start, and the shadows, well, they must have been tall men, were drawing closer to her.”
“Could they have been black people?”
“I think that that might be a possibility, possibly two black fishermen because, hum, when she managed to start the car and drive away, the shadows, men that is, had come up on the road and one of them was holding a fishing rod and…”
“Fishing rod? She positively identified it as a fishing rod?”
“No. No, she didn’t, but it seemed to me that that would be the only, hum, thing a man could have with him there at that time of the day, at daybreak, would be a fishing rod, some early morning fishing, I think, hum.”
Lamar’s voice turns into the hissing of a snake, “So you are reporting what you, you, not what Miss Trahan saw, but what you think she saw, is that right?”
“Well, Sheriff, I don’t, I think, hum.”
“What exactly did she say? Come on, speak up or you’ll be in trouble!”
Thompson hears someone laugh in the background, he bites his lips and remembers how he had been harassed by the Sheriff when the school admitted black pupils, and shakes his head. “She told me that she couldn’t make out if they were black people or not because of the morning light and that the tallest one was pointing a, some kind of rod at her and…” Thompson hesitates for a second, “And that she lost notion of time.”
There’s a moment's silence. Then Lamar starts barking again, “A rod? So it could, possibly have been a shotgun?”
“She said a rod.”
“And the fact that she lost notion of time could have been, well, I know that she goes to church, but could she have been under the influence of drugs, maybe?”
“Miss Trahan would never drug herself!” Thompson stands up and slams his fist on his desk.
“I’m sure of that!” There’s a loud bang. Lamar must have slammed his fist on his desk. “But she could have been the victim of some kind of gas?”
“I would prefer not to answer that question. It would be better if you spoke to Miss Trahan in person,” Thompson sits down and looks at the ceiling again.
“You can be sure that I will do that!”
Thompson listens to the buzz on the telephone line, gets up from his chair, pours himself a cup of coffee, and decides to get rid of the magazine that he has in the drawer, just in case the Sheriff turns up with a search warrant.

Lamar looks at the receiver that he has just slammed down on the telephone, sniffs, and looks at Polydore, “Mello Joy, isn’t it?”
A big smile appears on Polydore’s lips, “You want another mug?” He knows that Lamar always surrenders to a couple of big mugs of freshly brewed Mello Joy in the morning. The danger of watching one of the Sheriff’s famous hysterical outbreaks is reduced to almost zero.
Lamar holds out his mug to Polydore, who, in just a couple of quick steps, has reached the Hamilton Beach electric coffee brewer and fills up Lamar’s Confederate mug and his own, which has a happy, smiling Mickey Mouse on it. Lamar could never understand why Polydore had a Mickey mug.
When the Confederate mug is back on the desk, Lamar takes it, sips some coffee, and leans back in his comfortable office chair. His eyes wander from the clock to the radio, then to the exit, then to the door where the two cells are, and back to his mug. He drinks some more coffee, takes a deep breath, and looks at Polydore, “What do you think about all of this?”
Polydore looks at the happy Mickey, pokes his lip with his tongue, and glances at the clock, “Hum, I think that, Miss Trahan doesn’t lie, Sheriff. If she says that she saw something, then she saw something.” Polydore has some more coffee, “But the question is what she saw?”
Lamar leans forward, puts down this mug, and clasps his hands, “That’s exactly my opinion. What did she see? That idiot, you know who I mean, gave his opinion about what she saw and…”
“Could it have been two black men with a shotgun?”
Lamar looks down at the telephone, and for a second, he’s thinking about calling up the school again, but then he forgets about it. “Polydore, we’re going to investigate this. I don’t think anyone is in distress in the swamp; those who enter the swamp know it well, and the rest don’t dare to.”
Polydore nods and finishes his coffee.
“There could be a couple of things going on there. There’s a possibility that some hippies are running an illegal party there.”
“Illegal party?” Polydore blinks.
“Yes! You have heard that those people consume all kinds of illegal drugs, and the vapours from those illegal drugs could have reached Mrs. Trahan; that would explain the sensation of loss of time. She became intoxicated. And, I heard that those hippies dance around naked under the moonlight.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of those naked hippie girls,” the repulsive Rio de Janeiro smile appears on Polydore’s face, and then he laughs.
Lamar laughs too, but then he holds up his right hand to silence Polydore.
“And, Sheriff, what about the other things?”
“There could also be black people organizing in the swamp. You have seen what is going on around the country; they get together, practice their tactics, and then all hell breaks loose.”
Polydore’s face looks like concrete, then he strokes his hand over his forehead and slowly blows out all the air from his lungs, “A race riot! I’ll be dammed.”
“Isn’t it funny that we never had these things going on here, until now, do you see what I mean?”
Polydore shakes his head, “No, I don’t.”
“That woman! Am I right?”
“The blond one with all the freckles? The one that took over the restaurant?”
“Exactly. Have you noticed that since she turned up here, we have had all kinds of incidents? First, we had the one at the gas station, people we don’t know come here, cars with registration plates from Michigan, those two families in exactly the same cars…”
“Skipper Trudeau says he saw that old, black woman working at the restaurant and that they had some kind of suspicious, hum, equipment aboard his trawler.”
“See what I mean?”
Polydore scratches his neck, looks at the Hamilton Beach, and then back at Lamar, “Now I see what you mean.”
“They could be civil rights activists building up an organization here, right under our noses!” Lamar taps the desk with his finger a couple of times. “So I want you to load up your Ford truck and head out into the swamp and investigate if there’s any suspicious activity there.”
“Got that, Sheriff.”
“And I want you to take the Remington with you.”
“A shotgun, why would I need that?”
“There could be even worse things hiding in the swamp,” Lamar’s voice is like a hissing snake when he leans forward over the table and stares at his Deputy, who has just taken out the Remington from the weapons safe and dry fires it towards the floor a couple of times.
Polydore looks at Lamar and laughs, “Sheriff, what could be worse than a bunch of naked Hippies?”
“Communists!”
The Remington lands on the floor with a loud, metallic bang. Polydore backs up to the wall, fumbles, but his fingers find his revolver, and then he starts to sweat. His lips tremble, and his eyes are like those of a hypnotized man. Images of brainwashed American prisoners of war, released from North Korean camps, flash before him. “Communists,” he slowly whispers the word.
There’s a big crash, and the Confederate mug flies up in the air when Lamar’s fist lands on the desk. “Yes! God damn it! Communists!” He leans forward, his face has turned into that of an aggressive bulldog, and some saliva is dripping from his mouth. Lamar’s hissing starts again, “Maybe they have infiltrated the swamp using rubber dinghies from a submarine. Espionage Polydore, espionage.”
“Espionage?” The spasms in Polydore’s sweaty face become more visible.
Lamar picks up the Remington and hands it to Polydore. Then he takes out a green box and a red box of shotgun shells and holds them up, “The green are slugs, and the red are pellets. You’ll load one red and then one green, that will give you plenty of firepower if someone tries to go tough on you.” Lamar puts the boxes on his desk and grabs his gun belt, “This could be very serious, Polydore.”
Polydore starts to load, but then he stops and licks his lips, “Why, hum, I might sound ignorant, but why would there be, hum, infiltration in our swamp.”
Lamar walks over to the large map on the other side of the office. “Look at this,” he puts his finger on a spot in Texas. “Where’s this?”
“Houston!” Polydore smiles.
“And from where are they launching the rockets into space?”
“Cape Kennedy, Florida!” Polydore looks like a happy schoolboy.
“And what’s in Houston that is related to Cape Kennedy?”
The happy schoolboy blinks a couple of times and turns into Polydore again, “Well, I, at this moment, I don’t remember, Sheriff.”
“The NASA Houston Space Center! They are the ones controlling the rockets and the spacecrafts. And a lot of the communications between Cape Kennedy and Houston use radio signals. And where are we?”
“Well, we’re here, I mean, here in Alligator, right here!” Polydore blinks again.
“Follow my finger.”
Polydore stares at Lamar’s finger when he draws a straight line from Houston to Cape Kennedy. He mumbles something, starts to sweat, pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket, and wipes away the sweat, “Sheriff, jeez, we're right on the line, I…”
“If you want to intercept radio communications, you would like to be here, wouldn’t you. A big, nice swamp. Nobody ever enters. Plenty of alligators, bugs, and aggressive wild boar,” Lamar grins at Polydore. “Those men that Trahan, Mrs. Trahan I mean, saw could have been spies, dressed in black camouflage.”
Polydore has put the shotgun on the desk and starts filling up his pockets with extra ammunition. Then he licks his lips again, “Hum, maybe, shouldn’t we call the FBI? It’s their job to take care of…”
Lamar holds up his hand, “We don’t want that! They could find out about our other activities.”
Polydore nods.
“So you just take it easy. If you see something suspicious, you come back here and report, then we’ll use our men to root out whatever evil is lurking in the swamp.”

The Ford’s engine warms up and settles into a comfortable rhythm.
“You got everything you need?” Lamar scratches his neck.
“Everything! I still got some sandwiches, which I didn’t eat at night, and a cold Dixie and plenty of ammunition!”
Lamar bangs his hand on the engine hood a couple of times, “You take care out there!”
Polydore puts the car in first gear and presses the gas pedal. The Ford truck with the Sheriff’s star rattles down the road towards the airboat docks.
Lamar turns around and walks back to the office, stops, and spits, “Hippies!”

2:38 PM, Dead Man’s Lake.

The airboat floats slowly over the green waters of the swamp. Polydore knows how to navigate between the large water Cedars and the small green islands. His green Deputy shirt has turned black, and his hat can’t soak up any more sweat. “Dammed heat!” Polydore grins, pushes his hat back, and wipes his forehead with his left hand. Drops of condensation run down the water bottle next to his left foot. On the right side is the Remington riot gun and the boxes of ammunition. He spits into the water and pushes his hat forward to protect his eyes from the blinding sunlight that sometimes penetrates the heavy canopy. When he passes a half-rotten wooden cottage, he thinks for a second that he is here just because some hysterical teacher has seen some lights. He spits in the water again, “When I get back, I’ll go and have a couple of cold beers at Catfish Bar. I sure as hell have earned a couple of them today for listening to that idiot at the school!”
A huge wall of Bald Cypresses turns up in front of his boat. Polydore pulls on the handle, and the propeller on the airboat slows down. He looks to his left and his right. There seems to be a gap between the large trees to his right, so he slowly steers towards it. When he is sure that he can pass through, he speeds up and steers the airboat over the black water. On the other side of the wall of trees, a small island with some egrets on it appears on his left side.
After passing by the island, the canals become more and more narrow. Polydore looks up at the foliage and the Spanish Moss that blocks out the sunlight. Polydore grins, wipes away the sweat from his face, and mumbles to himself, “I’ll have a whiskey too today.” When all sounds slowly die away, he realises where he is. He picks up the shotgun and puts it over his knees. Then he turns off the engine, and the airboat silently passes the last of the Cedars and silently glides into Dead Man’s Lake. Polydore picks up the Remington, and his wide-open eyes move from one side to the other and then back again. When the boat has lost all speed, it comes to rest, and all the small waves disappear. The water is completely black, and there is not a single movement or sound.
Polydore looks at an island to his left, which has three large trees standing together on the right side. His grandfather had told him some stories about some ghosts that were supposed to be on that island, the one that was used to bury slaves. The heat disappears, and he starts to feel cold. He shivers, shakes it off, and looks at the large island that is just in front of him. He takes a deep breath and waits, but there seems to be nothing on the island. His eyes are drawn to a large burnt tree in the middle of the island, and for a second, he thinks about the legend he was told by Granddad Frederic, the one about a black girl who had been hanged there and had cursed the lake. Then, afterwards, people who had come here had disappeared, and others had been found dead with horrible wounds. For a second, he thinks about turning the boat around and telling Lamar that he hadn’t found anything. He looks at a spaghetti-shaped sandbank that sticks out of the water to his right, but then his eyes wander back to the island with the burnt tree. And then he glances over his shoulder and back at the tree. “Dammed.” Polydore pulls out a compass and checks the direction, then he checks it again and shakes his head. “How the hell could a light coming from here have gotten through all that thick foliage and be seen from the road that runs next to the swamp?” He scratches his neck and checks the compass again. He bites his lips, glances at the sky, drops the compass next to the water bottle, and pulls on the gas handle. The propeller starts, the boat accelerates, and flies over the black water.
The airboat bumps over the sand and onto the grass when Polydore drives it up on the island. The sound of the engine and the propeller dies away when he jumps off the airboat with the Remington ready in his hands. As fast as he can, he rushes towards the burnt tree.
When he reaches it, he looks in all directions. From here, he can control the whole island.
After waiting and wishing he were in Rio de Janeiro, he pushes his hat back, pulls out a handkerchief from his pocket, and wipes away the sweat from his face. He pushes the wet handkerchief down his left back pocket, grips the shotgun, and slowly starts to explore the island.
Finally, drenched in sweat, he takes the last steps and reaches the airboat. There are no traces of any human activity on the island. No Russian dinghy boats, no bottles, no fires, no empty cans, and no spy radio. Nothing.
Polydore takes off his hat and waves it in front of his red face. He stops and stares at the middle of the lake when some bubbles emerge from the black water. He points the shotgun at the bubbles and waits. But nothing happens.
“You can’t catch me!”
“What the hell!” Polydore swings his gun to the left, towards the sandbank, and crouches down, ready for anything. But he’s not ready for the sight of a black girl pushing a white girl on the sandbank. He stands up and lowers the shotgun, “Hey! Sheriff’s Deputy here! How the hell did you get here? Where’s your boat?”
When the white light hits him from above, he freezes. The Remington drops from his hands, and the sight of the two girls disappears. Polydore tries to move but is unable. Apart from his eyes, he is completely paralyzed. Then a bad smell, similar to that of rotting meat, reaches his nose. He moves his eyes to the right and looks into the glowing, yellow eyes of a large, dark shadow.
Then he passes out.

7:31 AM, Monday, 25 April, Road 57 from Dulac to Chauvin.

The cool breeze from the sea has created a heavy mist in the swamp. The old, rusty, dirty Ford Farm truck is slowly making its way down the Bayou Sale Road, also known as ’57.
André drives slowly because he can hardly make out the road. His father, Antoine, has opened the side window and is smoking his black Porter pipe. Big clouds of smoke, smelling of charred oak and pepper, fill the truck’s cabin, making it even harder for André to see the road. For a second, he thinks of telling his father to put out the pipe, but when he glances at him and sees the big smile on his face as he blows out another big cloud of smoke, he shakes his head and smiles too.
He steers clear of a large stone on the right side of the road. “Pa, that’s some great-smelling tobacco! What’s the name again?” The truck hits a hole and bumps. The black chickens, in the back of the truck, with their feet tied together, start to cackle wildly.
“Acadian Gold! No more, no less. It’s pure Perique tobacco, one of the world’s rarest and only grown in Louisiana.” Antoine smiles and blows out another huge, well-smelling cloud. “It’s just as black as we are because they mash it in barrels!” Antoine puffs on his pipe with a smile, his eyes lose themselves in nowhere, and then he turns to his son, holding up his pipe, “Son, you know that this here pipe has been with me ever since I came back from the war. It’s handmade in New Orleans. I bought it in a small store just next to a cafe with a wooden Voodoo statue in the center of the city. I was so glad to be alive and back home that I decided I was well worth it.”
André glances at his father. “Pa, you earned the right to smoke it whenever and wherever you want!”
Suddenly, a burst of cold air clears the cabin of smoke.
Antoine points his pipe towards the road, “Some two hundred and fifty yards farther down the road, there’s going to be a turn to the left.”
“How do you know?”
Antoine puffs on his pipe and releases another large cloud of smoke, “Son, I’ve been driving here for twenty years. Delivering chickens and rice to the whole Bayou area. We just passed a small canal, that’s why the cold air came in through the window.”
André glances at his father quickly before avoiding another hole.
“You’re doing great, son. When you drive a lot, you learn the roads and can comfortably sit and enjoy your pipe as I do.” This time, it’s laughter that fills the cabin. “Old ’57 hasn’t changed much in the last ten years.
André just shakes his head, smiles, and tries to make out the road.
“Stop!”
“What?” André grasps the steering wheel and leans forward.
“Stop the truck!”
André slams his foot on the brake and puts the gear into neutral. The chickens are cackling even more and jumping around. The old truck sways a little, followed by complete silence except for the engine's rhythmic tum-tum.
“Don’t you see him?” Antoine points his pipe towards the windshield.
“See who?” André leans forward over the steering wheel, and then he glances at his father. “There’s nobody there,” there’s a slight ring of distrust in his voice. Antoine knocks out the ash from the pipe on the outside of the door, “He’s just in front of you. Have a good look.” Antoine puts the empty pipe back into his mouth.
André leans forward again, and this time he is able to make out the shape of a man, who's so white that he has completely blended in with the mist. It’s only his long neck and red face that make him stand out. “Lord Jesus!” André takes a deep breath and looks at his father, “I could have run him over! How did you know that he was here?”
“Son, when you have been driving around here as long as I have, then you know where things are, and this here, white man doesn’t belong here.” The truck door clicks when Antoine opens it.
André also gets out and walks up to the man, who's only dressed in his underwear.
Antoine knocks the man on his head with his pipe, “Stiff like dead wood.”
“Do you think that he’s dead?”
Antoine puts his hand under the turkey-necked man’s nose, “Nope! He’s alive, alright, but something happened to him.”
“What?”
Antoine puts the pipe in his mouth and pushes the man a little with his right hand, “I don’t know. I saw things like this during the war, men would freeze and couldn’t move because of how scared they were.” Antoine knocks him on the head again with his pipe, “But I know who he is.”
“You do?” André leans forward and stares at his father.
“Yes, I do!” Antoine knocks the man several times on his head with his pipe. “This is the deputy who made me carry all the rice sacks down in Alligator some weeks ago.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as hell am!” Antoine takes off his hat and looks up, “Sorry, Lord, but he is one mean, well, you know what I want to say.”
André kicks the man on his knee, “I should have run you over!”
“Stop that!”
“Pa! He mistreated you!”
“Well, we don’t do that!” Antoine walks around the man and looks at him, “We stopped delivering there because of this here man, but we’re not like them.”
“And if we throw him into the swamp?”
“No!”
“Pa.”
“No! Definitely no!” Antoine stops in front of the man and looks into his staring, lifeless eyes, “Someone did something bad to him.”
“I’m glad they did!” André shows all of his white teeth in a big smile.
“I think he has a chicken name, of some sort.” Antoine takes off his hat and scratches his head a couple of times, puts it back on, and waves his hand in front of the man.
“Chicken name?”
“I heard it when I was delivering. To that store, I mean, when he made me…”
“Carry all the heavy sacks?”
“Yes! But I don’t remember his name.” Antoine takes out his tobacco pouch and starts filling his pipe, “Come on, son, say some chicken names.”
“Henrietta?”
“Nope,” Antoine lights his pipe and blows a big cloud of smoke into the man’s face.
“Dorothy?”
“Nope,” Antoine slaps the man on his cheeks a couple of times.
“Daisy?”
“Nope,” Antoine squeezes the man’s cheek with his thumb and index finger.
“Polly?”
There’s a loud noise when Antoine’s palm lands on the man’s cheek, “That’s it! Polydore! That’s the…” Antoine looks up and takes off his hat, “Sorry, Lord, the son of a bitch’s name, Polydore!” When the hat has gone back on, Antoine blows another cloud of smoke into Polydore’s face and slaps him again. Then he turns to his son and smiles, “Just checking if we can get some human reaction out of this, well, Deputy.”
André smiles too and kicks Polydore on his knee a couple of times. “Pa, you’re right! This man is stiffer than…”
“Some petrified sea gull guano on the beach.”
André slaps his knees and bursts into loud laughter. Then he straightens up and kicks Polydore on the other knee. “No reaction, Pa!” André has a big, happy smile on his face.
Antoine crosses his arms and, with the pipe hanging from his mouth, turns his head to the right, and his smile disappears. After a second, he takes the pipe from his mouth and points at Polydore, “Son, you might not like what we’re going to do with this, this here Deputy.”
“Of course I do!” André’s mind is full of ideas. Feeding Polydore to the alligators is the lesser evil of them.
“Son, we’re going to load him up on the truck and drive him to the Sheriff’s Office in Alligator.”
The smile drops from André’s face. A second pass, and then he straightens up, “Pa, why the hell would we do that for?”
Antoine holds up his pipe, “No swearing, son!”
“Sorry,” André looks down at his boots and then back up at his father. “Why?”
“Because, as I said,” Antoine stresses the words to make them clear to his beloved son. “We’re not like them. We believe in and try to do what the Lord wants us to do. And throwing this man into the swamp might not be what the Lord wants.” Antoine draws in some smoke and then blows it into Polydore’s face, “This man’s, hum, punishment will surely come, but it is not up to us.” Antoine slaps Polydore on his cheek again, and then he smiles at his son, “And look at him, stiff, lifeless, he already got what he deserves!”
The half moon smile comes back on André’s face, and he rubs his palms, “You’re right, Pa. Someone did something horrible to him.”
Antoine grabs hold of Polydore’s shoulders and tilts him back, “Help me to get him up on the truck.”
André bends down, gets hold of Polydore’s feet, and lifts them. Together, they carry him to the side of the truck.
“Let’s swing him like he was a log,” Antoine bites his pipe.
They swing him from the left to the right.
“One!” Antoine counts and bites his pipe.
Polydore goes higher and higher up in the air.
“Two!”
Polydore almost reaches up to the truck bed.
“Three!”
Polydore flies over the side of the truck and lands with a dull thump on the rice sacks among the dozen black chickens. The chickens immediately start to hack on the motionless Polydore, whose white feet are sticking out over the back of the truck.
Antoine slaps his palms a couple of times, “Well now, there he is with the rest of the chickens.”
André puts his hand over his mouth to silence his loud laughing.

Antoine holds up his box of matches and shows it to his son, “This is very important if you smoke a pipe.” Antoine uses his thumb to press down the Perique mash into the pipe. He lights it and blows out some smoke.
“How come?”
“Because the old Zippo lighters would smell a lot of gasoline, that would spoil the aroma of the tobacco.”
The truck bumps over a stone, and André looks in the rear mirror, “He’s so stiff he won’t fall off.”
When the truck drives into the mist, they are unaware that a small orb follows them.

8:34 AM, Sheriff’s Office, Alligator.

When the white, wooden building with its characteristic red brick jail behind it comes into sight, André turns off the engine and silently steers the truck into the parking lot next to the building.
Antoine holds up his finger and points at the wall. André pulls the hand brake, and then, at the same time, both of them get out of the truck. Swiftly, André jumps up on the truck bed, looks around, and lifts Polydore’s feet. Antoine is ready, and together they lower the stiff body down onto the ground. André jumps down, and together they drag Polydore towards the wooden wall and put him like a piece of dead wood against it. They both smile at each other and silently climb into the truck's cabin. The birds are chirping, and the American flag is flying in the wind.
Just as André is about to turn the truck key and start the engine, there is a loud bang as the office door flies open.
“What the hell is going on here?” Butch Lamar’s corpulent silhouette appears in the middle of the door with his Python ready.
Both André and Antoine lift their hands when they see him.
“Polydore?” Lamar’s voice is almost inaudible, and his eyes have turned the size of spaghetti plates. Slowly, he walks out on the porch. His eyes moves from the truck to Polydore and back again.
Gaspard appears in the door with a Remington riot gun pressed against his shoulder, “Sheriff, you want me to finish these black folks off!”
Lamar holds up his hand.
André is about to throw up, but his father pats him on the shoulder.
“Get them dammed hands up where I can see them!” Lamar’s voice doesn’t leave any doubt, so Antoine slowly raises his left hand. “Gaspard, get to the right of that truck and cover me. If either of the two tries to move, you just blow some big holes in them.
Deputy Gaspard steps down with the 12-gauge shotgun pressed at his right shoulder as he moves towards the truck’s passenger seat. “If you move, your next stop will be the cemetery!”
André feels like throwing up again.
Antoine starts mumbling to his son in a way that can’t be heard by Gaspard. “Son, I’ve been through worse than this; we even faced the SS during the war. Keep calm.”
André blinks.
“You want me to shoot them, Sheriff?” Gaspard grins as he slowly approaches the passenger seat and points the shotgun at Antoine’s head.
“Wait! I want to see what has happened to Polydore, and then I’ll interrogate these, whatever they are?” Lamar moves towards the back of the truck and the stiff body of Polydore, which is leaning against the wall.
“Chicken and rice farmers, that’s what we are!” Antoine tries to sound confident, but some drops of sweat make their way down his back. Then he glances at his son, whose arms are shaking and who has just closed his eyes, mumbling something about Jesus.
“Shut up!” Gaspard sticks the shotgun into the window and puts it against Antoine’s head. Then he grins again, “The sheriff just said he will interrogate you. You’ll soon wish that you were dead.”
André throws up on the steering wheel.
Antoine glances at him and mumbles, “Just keep calm, son.”
Lamar has reached Polydore and stares at him, “What the hell have they done to you?. He slaps Polydore in the face with his left hand, “Wake up!” Lamar keeps slapping Polydore until his palm hurts, shakes his head, and takes a deep breath, “I’m going to make them pay for this, I promise you that.” He glances back at Gaspard, “Get them out of that pickup truck!”
Gaspard grins and pushes Antoine with the shotgun, “You heard the Sheriff. Get the hell out of the truck and walk over to the wall.”
André throws up again, wipes his mouth with the back of his right hand, and whispers to his father, “I told you we shouldn’t have come here.”
Antoine blinks. “Easy, son. The Lord…”
Bang! Gaspard has knocked off the right side mirror with the shogun’s butt stock. “Get out now! You hear me, you dammed idiots!”
“No talking! Line them up here just next to Polydore!” Lamar cocks his Python, and his face becomes redder and redder.
“Sheriff ordered you to get out!” Gaspard points the Remington at André’s head.
If he had anything left in his stomach, André would have thrown up again, but now his trembling hand pulls on the door lock. He silently climbs down from the Ford and lifts his hands in the air.
Antoine does the same, thinking that his son’s idea to feed Polydore to the alligators wasn’t so bad after all.
“Move!” Gaspard kicks Antoine in the leg.
Antoine stares at Gaspard with fire in his eyes.
“Yes! You think about it, and you’re going to end up with so much led in you that your corpse will be toxic!” Gaspard lifts the shotgun and points it at Antoine’s face.
“Led intoxication! That’s what they call it!” Lamar laughs and watches as Antoine slowly raises his hands up in the air. “Get them over here!”
“Move!” Gaspard pushes Antoine with the butt stock.

“Now, you explain what you have done to my Deputy!” Lamar points his left hand at Polydore and his Python at Antoine.
Antoine glances at Polydore, who is a couple of feet to his left side, and then at his son and Gaspard, who are to his right side, next to the Ford truck. Then he closes his eyes and mumbles something about Lord Jesus, opens his eyes and breathes deeply, “Sheriff, we haven’t done anything to your Deputy.”
“Don’t try to tell me that you found him like this.”
“That’s exactly what we did.”
“That’s a lie!”
“No, Sheriff, it’s not,” Antoine’s voice is calm. After saying his quick prayer, he has managed to calm down. “We found him on the Bayou Sale road, in the middle of the mist, just next to the swamp.”
“Next to the swamp?”
“Next to the swamp!” Andre’s voice is nervous, not at all like his father’s. When Lamar stares at him, he understands that it’s better to let his father do all the talking.
“Next to the swamp, Sheriff. I’m a religious man, so I don’t lie. We found him like this, stiff like a piece of dead wood, in the middle of the mist. Thick mist, you know it forms in the morning and…”
“I know all about that!” Now Lamar stares at Antoine, “How come you brought him here and not to any other place?”
Antoine blinks, takes a deep breath, and is silent for a second, “I knew who he was, I…”
“Come on! Spit it out!” Lamar’s face is becoming red again.
“He, he made me carry all the rice sacks, from my truck to the General Store, a couple of weeks ago, and…”
“I know you, too. You deliver rice here, Fontenot buys from you, right?”
“Right.”
“Now, you explain why my Deputy has feathers in his mouth!”
“The chickens got nervous when we loaded, well, put him in the back of the truck and…”
“Gaspard, have a look at the truck and tell me what’s there?”
Gaspard lowers the Remington and moves over to the truck, “Sheriff! There’s about ten sacks of rice here and maybe a dozen black chickens!”
“Count them!”
“Why?”
“Count them, I said!”
Gaspard takes his finger from the trigger and slowly counts the chickens. He shakes his head, and then he counts them again, “Thirteen! Sheriff, there are thirteen black chickens back here!”
“Thirteen,” Lamar’s voice is almost inaudible. “What’s in the cabin?”
Gaspard moves over to the passenger’s seat, opens the door, and looks in. He opens the glove compartment, takes out an old Bible, looks at it, and then puts it back. “Just an old Bible!”
“Get back here!”
Gaspard moves back towards the group, lifts the Remington, and points it at Andrés' head again. He silently moves his lips. When André makes out that what Gaspard has said was, “Goodbye,” he feels like throwing up again.
“Why are the chickens black?”
Antoine looks at Lamar’s red face, then at his son and back at Lamar, “Sheriff, they’re just black. Nature made them like that.”
“Polydore, my Deputy who can’t move, told me about you. He said that you cultivate black rice, is that right?”
Antoine doesn’t know what to say, but finally he nods.
“So you cultivate black rice!”
“We do.”
“You know what I think happened. My Deputy went missing six days ago. He was investigating the swamp, and some strange lights were reported.”
Antoine tries to take down his hands, but when he stares into the large Python, he quickly holds them up again.
“My father, he was stationed with the Marines in Haiti, he told me stories about zombies…”
Antoine shakes his head in disbelief and tries to lower his hands again.
“Get them dammed hands up!” Lamar takes a step forward and pushes Antoine back against the wall. He waits for a second and steps back, “Zombies! Yes! Zombies! Working in the rice fields! People without a will, walking dead!” Lamar lowers his voice and points at Polydore, “Just like my Deputy. I think you were doing something in the swamp, and he found you. Then, somehow, you managed to capture him, and you turned him into what he is now, a zombie! Then you came to leave him here, to scare white people with your black Voodoo. My father told me that one way of turning people into zombies was to force them to drink the blood of black chickens!” Lamar quickly glances at Gaspard, who has a mix of uncontrolled fear and hate stamped on his face, and then back at Antoine. “What the hell have you been up to in the swamp?”
Antoine looks down on the mate black Python and shakes his head again.
“I’m going to find out what you’re doing there, what you did to my Deputy, and then…”
“I saw those lights too!”
Lamar, Antoine, and Gaspard all look at André.
“I saw the lights too! One morning, when I was out fishing, I was using Pa’s small boat. I got scared, something was moving around in there, in the swamp! André looks from left to right and then blinks.
“What was moving around?” Lamar’s snake voice has come back.
“I, two maybe three large shadows. It was in the morning, there was some mist, and I couldn’t see…”
“What size were they?” Lamar points the Python at André.
“I, Sheriff, this might sound crazy, but the tallest one must have been eight feet high, I…”
“Eight feet?” Lamar stares at André.
“Hum, Sheriff, I…” Gaspard looks away for a second, “There’s something I kind of forgot to tell you.”
Now Lamar stares at Gaspard, and then he explodes, “What the hell did you forget to tell me?”
“He, the…” Gaspard licks his lips. “The, he said that, Miss Trahan had said, told him that the, hum, shadows she had seen, were, seven to eight feet and…”
“And one of them had a stick with a red light that made you lose your sense of time!” André looks at the three pairs of eyes staring at him.
“This happened the morning you came back late?” Antoine’s eyes are fixed on his son.
“Yes, Pa! Four days ago.”
“Sheriff, I, hum, missed to tell you that detail, I…” Gaspard looks down.
“Deputy! Tell me everything, everything, now!”
“I took a note of that too, that there was a red light. And Miss Trahan suspected that after they pointed it at her, well, that’s when she lost the notion of time.”
“The same that happened to me!” André’s smile disappears when Lamar stares at him and makes a gesture with his revolver that immediately has him stretch his hands higher up in the air.
Lamar focuses his attention on his Deputy Gaspard, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I wrote, well, I didn’t tell you because it would sound like I had been drinking.”
Lamar holsters his revolver, crosses his arms, turns around, and walks up to the road. At that precise moment, a yellow, metallic 98 Rocket Oldsmobile appears, slows down, and for a second, he sees the freckled woman who’s wearing a blue head scarf with white lilies and her Ray-Bans. “I’ll be dammed! That’s the woman who’s stirring up all the problems!” He spits after the car, kicks a stone, and turns around towards his office, where Gaspard, Antoine, and André are waiting to see what happens. Lamar straightens up, grabs his gun belt, and raises his voice, “I want full statements from you chicken farmers! And you, Gaspard, you’ll show me those dammed first notes you took!”

Lamar looks at the papers. In his left hand are Gaspard’s first notes, and in his right are the written and signed statements of Antoine and his son, “There seems to be some coincidences here.”
“Sheriff, you made us write them separately and without speaking, so now you can see that this wasn’t a planned thing.”
Lamar looks up at Antoine, “There’s something strange here.”
“Of course, there’s something strange, how could we, well, I mean, my son, know the things a woman had reported a week ago. How could they coincide? After all, she is white. We don’t know each other.”
Gaspard scratches his chin, “He’s got a point there, Sheriff.”
Gaspard stops scratching his chin when Lamar grins at him, “I’ll look into this.” Then he looks at Antoine, “I got your address, both driver’s licence numbers, and your truck’s licence plate number. Now you listen to me, if I hear that you have fled, we’ll find you, and then you’re going to be really unhappy!” Lamar pulls out his revolver and places it on the desk.
Antoine holds up his hand, “Sheriff, if you’re going to shoot us, I would like to smoke my pipe first.”
Lamar’s eyes move from one side to another, but then he nods to Antoine.
Antoine takes out his pipe, packs it with tobacco, and lights it. He slowly puffs on it, blows out the smoke, and smiles.
“That’s some good-smelling tobacco. What’s the name of it?” Gaspard shuts up when he notices the Sheriff’s eyes.
“Acadian Gold! Only grown and processed in Louisiana,” Antoine blows out another cloud of smoke. “Sheriff, we’re just as interested in finding out what is going on in the swamp. There are many stories about people who disappeared in there. The bodies were found mutilated. Close to, to…”
“Dead Man’s lake!”
Antoine looks at his son, “Did you go fishing there?”
André nods without saying anything.
“You know I told you to never go there.” Antoine’s happy smile has disappeared.
“Pa, that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to lie to you and say that I had seen what I saw in some other place. I…”
“That’s your dammed family business! Now I want both of you chicken farmers to climb onto your wreck of a truck and get out of here,” Lamar gets up from the chair and holds onto the desk with both hands. Then he picks up his revolver and holsters it. “Get the hell out of here and remember that we’ll be watching you. Get out!” Lamar slams his fist on the desk.
Antoine blinks at his son and makes a gesture with his head towards the door. They both leave without saying anything.
Lamar picks up his hat, puts it on, and walks out the door, followed by Gaspard.
He watches how Antoine knocks out the smouldering tobacco from his pipe on the rusty truck’s door before climbing in. “Get the hell out of here!” He shouts at them.
Antoine and André roll onto the ’56 in their rusty Ford truck. There’s a loud, creaky noise when gear number two goes in, and all of the chickens start to cackle.
The last thing that Lamar sees is the red Louisiana licence plate, with the embossed serial number, the slogan “Sportsmen’s Paradise” at the top, and at the bottom “19 Louisiana 58” before the truck drives past Fontenot’s store. Then the clonking sound of the old, worn-out engine dies away too.
Lamar spits on the porch and puts on his hat, “Get those dammed black chicken feathers out of Polydore’s mouth. I’ll go and start the Impala.”

Just as Polydore has removed the last of the chicken feathers and cleans his hand on his handkerchief, Lamar steps on the brake and jumps out, “Let’s get him in on the backseat!” He pulls the backseat door open, and together they lift up Polydore, who has been leaning against the wall all the time, and try to get him into the backseat.
When they finally get him in, both Lamar and Gaspard are sweating profusely. Polydore’s feet are sticking out the side window.
Gaspard takes off his hat and wipes away the sweat from his face, “Sure is good that you got a big car, Sheriff!”
Lamar grabs hold of Gaspard’s shirt and points at Polydore’s white feet, “Look at him! They turned him into a zombie!”
Gaspard shakes his head, “Sheriff, if they did, why didn’t we just shoot them?”
“Something else is going on, something big.” Lamar lowers his voice. “Remember what I told you about the space launches from Cape Kennedy?”
Gaspard nods a couple of times.
“Maybe those dammed Communists have gotten into contact with the local black revolutionaries and are planning something. These two chicken farmers could never have captured Polydore on their own; they must have had some, uh…”
“Outside help?”
“Right!” Lamar pulls Gaspard closer and lowers his voice even more, “Now, we’ll keep an eye on those chicken farmers.” Lamar’s voice turns into a whisper. “You call the boys and give them the address, names, licence plate number, and tell them to keep an eye out for that dammed Voodoo truck!”
“The boys?”
“You know who I mean.”
“Right.”
“If that truck moves north of Houma, they should be stopped and taken here.”
“And the truck?”
“Just get rid of it,” Lamar spits on the ground. “Now I want you to call Johnston and tell him to come here. You wait by the telephone, I’ll drive Polydore up to the hospital in Houma and get him examined. We must know what happened to him. As soon as I know something, I'll call you back, do you understand?”
Gaspard nods, “Got it, Sheriff.”
“Good! Get going!” Lamar let go of Gaspard’s shirt and rushed towards the Impala. He gets in and slams the car door shut. He looks at the ’56, presses down the gas pedal, and swings the steering wheel to the left. The Impala turns up a large dust cloud when it flies onto the road, sways, and speeds off in the direction of Chauvin.
Lamar glances over his shoulder at Polydore’s stiff body, “I’ll get you the best doctors! I promise you that!” Then his eyes are drawn to some black chicken feathers that are still between Polydore’s lips, “God dammed! People can’t do anything right nowadays!”

9:45 AM, Road ’56, Chauvin.

The old, rusty Ford truck with the “Sportsmen’s Paradise” licence plate is overtaken by a large, black Chevrolet Impala, with a Sheriff’s Star and screaming sirens.
“That’s the Sheriff!” André leans forward over the steering wheel.
“He’s taking his Deputy up to the hospital in Houma,” Antoine blows out a huge cloud of smoke.
“How do you know Pa?”
“Deputy’s white feet are sticking out from the back seat’s side window.”
Both of them laugh loudly. André shakes his head and wipes a tear from his eye, “Today it was close, Pa, really close.”
“Son, now, you’ll just tell me how it came that you went fishing in a place where you’re not supposed to be and what happened.”

10:27 AM, Houma.

The Impala flies over the bridge and onto West Main Street. Lamar speeds towards the hospital with a howling siren that makes all other cars move to the side. He spins the steering wheel, and the tires scream as the car turns violently to the left. Some rubber sticks to the warm asphalt when he brakes. Lamar quickly unbuckles his seat belt, turns off the engine, and jumps out of the car. His eyes move from one side to the other, and then he fixes them on the new, modern, three-story, L-shaped building. There’s a loud bang when he slams the driver’s door shut.
“Don’t you worry! You’re going to get the best treatment available,” Lamar pats Polydore on his feet, stops, looks at his palm, and then rubs it against his pants while mumbling. Then he sets off for the entrance doors. He passes two elderly, white ladies on a bench, talking to each other. He touches the brim of his hat, “Morning, ladies!”
“Thank you, have a nice morning,” says the one wearing cat glasses and a blue dress.

The entrance doors flies open when Lamar violently makes his way into the hospital hall.
A woman behind a reception desk and a black woman cleaning the floor look at him. A door opens, and a man dressed in a white uniform enters the hall. He stops and looks at Lamar, whose face is as red as a beetroot.
The woman behind the desk stands up, “Can I help you?”
As fast as he can, Lamar walks up to the desk, takes off his hat, and waves it in front of his face, and takes a deep breath, “My Deputy…he…”
“Yes,” the middle-aged woman in her white, starch-ironed uniform, who has a nurse’s badge, smiles at him. “What can we do for you?” Her voice is like honey.
“Get me a dammed stretcher!”
The nurse steps back with her mouth half open. “I’m sorry?”
“Get me a stretcher now!”
“Sheriff, please, calm down,” she holds up her hands in front of her. “Tell me what has happened.”
“They, someone, something, has done something, God knows what, to my Deputy, Polydore.” Lamar points his finger at the man dressed in white, “Are you a doctor?”
“I’m an auxiliary.” The man wishes that he were somewhere else at this moment.
“Get me a stretcher! Now!” Lamar puts on his hat, and his right hand grabs the Python.
The auxiliary disappears behind the door marked “Staff” and returns with an ambulance stretcher.
Lamar slams his palm on the desk, and the nurse takes one more step back, “That’s what I want to see! Some dammed efficiency!” He points at the entrance, “Now we’re going to move my Deputy inside, and when we’re back, I want to see a doctor here. Do I make myself clear!” His palm lands on the desk again.
The auxiliary is unfolding the stretcher with trembling hands. Lamar reaches down, helps to secure the stretcher’s wheels, and then, holding the stretcher with one hand, he rushes towards the entrance doors.
For a second, the auxiliary doesn’t know what to do, so he looks at the nurse, who nods to him and points at the entrance, “Go help him.”
She watches him run out after the Sheriff and picks up the telephone, dials a number, and a red light is switched on. “Reception here. This is an emergency. A Sheriff has arrived with what could be a wounded Deputy. I request a doctor immediately,” her voice is back to being sweet and balanced. She listens, looks at the entrance, and answers, “No, no, he did not say it was a gun wound.” She picks up a pen and looks at it, “He, the Sheriff, just mentioned that something had been done to his Deputy.” She taps the pen on the desk a couple of times, “Yes, I understand. May I add that the Sheriff seemed to be in an altered state, he was grabbing his revolver all the time and shouting.” She waits, taps the pen again against the desk, “Oh, I see, you will give him an injection, something that calms him down.” When she hangs up, she smiles and picks up a paper that has fallen on the floor when the Sheriff slammed his hand on her desk. “A nurse should always stay calm, whatever happens,” she looks at her wristwatch and writes down what has happened in the reception’s entry journal.

Lamar rushes by the two ladies on the bench and glances back at the auxiliary, “Come on! Faster!
Both ladies follow him with their eyes, and then the auxiliary passes them.
“Something horrible must have happened, Margot.” The woman with the cat glasses points at the Impala, “Do you see those white feet sticking out from that patrol car?”
“Why, Elenor, you’re right!” Says the woman in the checkered skirt and white blouse.

The back seat door swings open, and Lamar turns to the auxiliary, “Lower that stretcher to the same height as his feet!”
The auxiliary pulls on a handle and lowers it just under the stiff man’s feet. Together, they pull on Polydore and manage to get him onto the stretcher.
Lamar slams the passenger’s door shut, “Come on, let’s get him in as fast as we can!”
The auxiliary holds up his hand, “Sheriff, once he’s on the stretcher, he’s our responsibility. We don’t want him to fall off, so I’m going to strap him down, and then we will walk back to the entrance.”
Lamar spits on the ground and nervously scratches his chin, “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
When the auxiliary pulls on the last strap, he feels confident that this crazy Sheriff isn’t going to pull out his huge revolver and shoot him for disobedience, “Ready, Sheriff, I’ll set the pace.”

When they pass the two ladies, Lamar touches the brim of his hat.
“Did you see that? Elenor, that looked like a real mummy.”
“Some kind of strange mummy on that stretcher. They’re supposed to be all wrapped up in bandages, and this one’s only in his underwear, Margot.” Elenor blinks at her friend, and both of them giggle.

There’s a man with a black tie, a white hospital gown, and a stethoscope around his neck waiting for them at the reception desk.
Lamar grins because he has immediately recognized him as a doctor, “Come on, auxiliary! Let’s move this stretcher up to the desk!”
The auxiliary glances back at the Sheriff and increases the pace. He stops just in front of the desk and steps to the side.
Lamar takes off his old hat and waves it in front of his red face, “I’m Sheriff Butch Lamar! This man here on the stretcher is my Deputy, Polydore!” He takes out a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes the sweat from his face. “And he, he, look at him, he’s…”
The man with the black tie holds up his hand, “Calm down! I’m Doctor Hendricks. Let’s see what has happened to this man.” Hendricks takes the stethoscope from his neck. “Nurse Beaumont, could you, please, be so kind as to take the notes?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” she picks up the pen and the yellow notepad. Then she writes down the time.
Lamar, squeezing his hat with both hands, looks on as the examination starts.
Hendricks puts the stethoscope against Polydore’s chest and listens, “Heart rhythm is normal, respiration is normal, eyes open, but they don’t move.”
Nurse Beaumont’s hand flies over the yellow paper.
“Patient has complete stiffness in his body, unable to move by himself.”
Efficiently, Nurse Beaumont writes it all down; she smiles and waits for the doctor to continue.
Hendricks knocks Polydore on the knee with a small hammer. Polydore’s leg trembles a little, “Patient has nerve reaction but seems to be in a hypnotic state.” He puts away the hammer, grabs Polydore’s wrist, and looks at his wrist watch, “Pulse is normal.”
Nurse Beaumont smiles again.
“Patient, named Polydore, was received at the hospital wearing only his Mickey Mouse underwear.”
Nurse Beaumont giggles, and the auxiliary bursts into loud laughter.
Sheriff Lamar pulls out his Python, “Why, you little slime ball, don’t you dare to laugh at my Deputy!”
The auxiliary steps back with his hands over his head, “I, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“Auxiliary, go back to your duties, now!” Hendricks points to the back door. While the auxiliary retreats towards the door, he turns to Lamar, “Sheriff, put away your revolver, and Nurse Beaumont, please cross over that comment about the Mickey Mouse underwear.”
Nurse Beaumont holds up the yellow notepad, “I already did, now it only says that the patient arrived in his underwear.
Lamar leans forward and looks at the notepad. Slowly, he holsters his revolver and puts his thumbs inside his gun belt. “So what are you going to do?”
“Tell me in what circumstances he was found?” Hendricks puts his hands in the gown's pockets and leans a little to the side. Nurse Beaumont is ready with the pen.
“You won’t mention the Mickey Mouse, hum, thing?”
“I can promise you that.”
Nurse Beaumont blinks and smiles when she hears how confident Doctor Hendricks is.
Lamar takes off his hat and puts it on the desk. Then he takes a deep breath, “My Deputy was found today on Road 57, leading from Dulac to Alligator, by two black chicken and rice farmers. They tried to leave him at my office and get away. We found them and, well, my Deputy was as stiff then as he is now. I interrogated the chicken farmers.” Lamar is about to spit on the floor, but remembers where he is.
Hendricks crosses his arms, “Interesting. What more can you tell me?”
“He went missing on 19 April in the swamp. I sent him there to investigate some strange lights. We searched for him several times but only found his shotgun and airboat, nothing else, and we know the swamp.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing! He just disappeared, gone, no trace of him.”
Hendricks strokes his chin and blinks, “That road, the ’57, is it close to the swamp?”
“On the other side of us. If you draw a straight line from Alligator up to Dulac, it’s about eleven miles.”
“So he’s been missing for a week. Did you find anything else?”
Lamar shakes his head.
“Nurse Beaumont, would you be so kind as to fill in the papers so that Sheriff Lamar can sign his Deputy’s entry into the hospital?”
“Right away, Doctor,” says Nurse Beaumont.
Hendricks watches how Beaumont sits down, puts a triple sheet into the electric typewriter, and starts typing. Then he looks at Lamar and turns Polydore’s head to the side, “What can you tell me about these marks here on his neck?”
Lamar leans forward and looks at the three small holes that form a triangle, “I’ll be dammed I never saw those before.”
“Never?”
“He’s been with me for years, and I never saw those.” Lamar shakes his head, “I mean, after all, he has a long neck and…”
“You would have noticed them.”
“Yes!”
“So he must have gotten them in the swamp. Snake bite?”
“Impossible! No snake has three fangs!”
“Any other possibility?”
“The chicken farmers.”
“How come?”
“They had thirteen black chickens in the back of their pickup truck.”
“And?”
“Voodoo!”
“Voodoo?”
“Yes! My father was stationed in Haiti with the Marines, he told me about their Voodoo cults, poisoning people, turning them into Zombie slaves.”
Hendricks strokes his chin and looks up at the ceiling, and then back at Lamar, “That’s a possibility.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Do you know what a puff fish is?”
Lamar shakes his head.
“It’s a very poisonous fish, they live next to the coast of Haiti, and a sting can paralyze, stop his lungs, and kill an adult man. Small quantities, diluted, could provoke this stiffness in a person.”
Lamar stares at Doctor Hendricks and fingers his revolver, “I’ll string those black chicken farmers up in a tree!”
Nurse Anderson stops typing and looks at Lamar. She goes back to typing when Hendricks holds up his hand and smiles at her.
“Come over here,” Hendricks waves to Lamar.
Both of them move away from the reception desk so that Nurse Beaumont can’t hear them.
“There’s also another possibility,”
“What?” Lamar scratches his neck.
“Those holes are too perfect. I’ve been a doctor for more than twenty years, and I have never seen such holes before. I know of nothing, not even the most precise instruments at our disposal, that could produce such perfect holes. Normally, there would be some tissue damage around them, but these, well, they don’t have them.”
“So?” Lamar takes out the handkerchief and passes it over his face.
“Abductions! Have you ever heard of them?”
“Abductions? Do you mean that, that, what we hear about spacemen and how they…”
“Aliens.”
“Aliens?”
“That’s what they are officially known as, because we don’t know where they come from.”
Lamar passes the handkerchief over his neck and then again over his face. He is now sweating profusely.
“This could, it’s just a possibility, a remote possibility, that your Deputy was abducted.”
Lamar blinks several times.
“As I said, it’s just a possibility. We are going to admit your Deputy as a patient for observation. We will feed him, make sure that he is not dehydrated, and give him some medicines to relax his muscles. I’m sure that he will soon be back to normal. Give your telephone number to Nurse Beaumont, and I’ll keep you informed about how he progresses.”
“Aliens,” Lamar mumbles the word. “Are you sure?”
“As I said, this is a very, very remote possibility. I have read some medical reports from other places in the country where people have been taken to the hospital in a state of confusion and with strange marks on them. Personally, I have never seen such marks until now. Those people had also disappeared for some time, and then they had been found in remote places.”
“Abductions? In more places?”
Hendricks nods, “Yes, I’ll research where they have happened, and then I will get in contact with those hospitals to see if I can get some more information.”
The telephone sounds, and Nurse Beaumont picks it up, listens, and then puts down the receiver, “Doctor, they need you!”
Hendricks stretches his hand to Lamar, “I’ll keep in contact, and if you find anything that could be helpful, please call here.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”

Lamar reads the papers, fills in Polydore’s surname on the dotted line, and hands the pen to Nurse Beaumont.
Beaumont hands Lamar his copy of the admission, “Well, Sheriff, everything in order. Are you sure you don’t want something to calm you down?”
Lamar shakes his head, “No, thank you. I’ll take care of it the old way when I get back.”
“Whiskey and beer?”
Lamar nods, “Do you know something about spacemen?”
“Astronauts, you mean?”
“No spacemen, from outer space?”
“I saw a movie, late fifties, when I was in high school, and I think it was called something, I don’t remember the name, but there were spacemen hiding in an ice camp, observing us.”
“Ice camp?”
“Yes, an ice camp, so that no one would know they were here.”
Lamar blinks, folds the pink paper, and puts it in his shirt's chest pocket. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for, you know,” he glances down at his revolver.
Beaumont waves her hand, “We nurses see all kinds of things here.”
Lamar picks up his hat, turns around, and walks towards the entrance. Lamar puts his hand on the entrance door.
“The Flying Saucer!”
Lamar turns around and looks at Nurse Beaumont, who has gotten up from her chair, “What?”
“The name of the movie!” She smiles at him.
Lamar waves to her, pushes the door open, and steps out into the sunlight.

“Hope you have a great day, Sheriff!”
Lamar stops and looks at Margot and Elenor. He licks his lips and takes off his hat, “Ladies, you wouldn’t know where I could find a copy of a newspaper, some weeks old.”
“What newspaper?” Margot smiles at Lamar.
“A copy of the Houma Courier.”
“Ellis barbershop, he never throws anything away, my husband goes there,” Elenor adjusts her cat glasses.
“Where would that be?”
“Follow this street, and then you take the third street to the left. You can’t miss it,” Margot gives Lamar another smile.
“Thank you. I’m sorry, I must hurry,” Lamar puts his hat back on and hurries towards the Impala.
Margot and Elenor wave to Sheriff Lamar when he drives away, and then they go back to talk about their families and friends.

3:41 PM, Sheriff’s Office, Alligator.

Lamar puts down the copy of the Houma Courier on the desk, crosses his arms, scratches his neck, crosses his arms, strokes his chin, and finally lifts the bottle. After having a drink, he looks at the bottle, has another drink, puts down the bottle, gets up from his chair, and starts to walk around the office, talking to himself, “Dammed! What the hell is going on here? Polydore is in the hospital with symptoms of some, some, puff fish!” He kicks the rubbish bin, which flies into the corner, and then he looks at the article in the newspaper again, “Strange lights, ice camps, swamps, Russians?” Lamar picks up the bottle and has another drink.

3:44 PM, Fontenot’s Store.

There’s a bling when the door is opened. Fontenot looks at the man who has just stepped in, “Good afternoon!”
“Thank you! Can I use the telephone?”
Fontenot points at the small cabin, “It’s all yours.”
The man, bald, with glasses, a foreign accent, with a notebook under his arm, marches with military steps towards the cabin, closes the door, and lifts up the receiver.
Fontenot watches him. The man is waiting, tense, then he smiles and starts talking. Fontenot looks through the register of what he has been selling the last week, but his attention is drawn to the telephone cabin when the man inside starts to beat the glass with his fist. “Hey! No monkey business!”
The bald man stares at him, puts his hand over the receiver, opens the door, and sticks out his head, “Monkey business?”
“Yeah, don’t you go breaking the glasses. If you do, I’ll make you pay for it or call the Sheriff, you understand.”
The man holds up two fingers in the air, closes the door, and goes back to shouting.
Fontenot looks down at his records, but then he looks at the cabin. “That man speaks German.”

6:20 PM, Sunday 1 May, Sheriff’s Office, Alligator.

Lamar leans over his desk. Staring at the radio that’s next to the electric coffee brewer. He has completely forgotten about the cup of coffee that’s on the desk. The radio man’s voice is hysterical, “Now, thousands of goose-stepping Red Army Guards have started to march! The people on the Red Square, here in Moscow, are all cheering!” Lamar’s face becomes that of a bulldog, imagining those die-hard Communists killing white Christian women and children, all in the name of World Socialism. His fist lands on the desk, and his Confederate mug lands on the floor. The radio man’s voice becomes even more hysterical, “The Red Guards have fixed bayonets on their assault rifles, the same as the Viet Cong uses in Vietnam!” Lamar pulls out his Python and spins the drum, “Dammed Russkies!” You come here, and I’ll kill you all!”
Gaspard slowly opens the door and peeks into the office. The sight of his Sheriff’s red, crazy face with his hand on the large Colt Python makes him close the door, light a cigarette, and wait.
“Slavianka! The military band is playing Slavianka, the song Russian soldiers hear when they march into battle.” The radio man’s voice is trembling.
Lamar points his revolver at Louisiana on the big map of America, “I’ll keep you Communist and subversive people who want to help those, those black people, away from here!”
Bring! Bring! Bring!
“What the hell?”
Bring! Bring! Bring!
Lamar picks up the telephone’s receiver, “Yes! What do you want?”
“Alligator, Sheriff’s Office? I’m Doctor Hendricks, Houma Hospital, and…”
“Give me a second!”
“Sorry?”
“Give me a dammed second!”
“Sheriff Lamar?”
“Yes!” Lamar rushes towards the radio and turns it off, and then back to the telephone, “Sorry! Some interference on the line!”
“Sheriff?”
“I hear you! Tell me, how is my Deputy doing?” Lamar listens, then he grabs the receiver with both hands,” What do you mean? Symptoms of brainwashing? Like American POWs held in North Korea?” He pulls out a drawer and puts a notepad on the desk, sits down, and is ready with a pencil in his hand, “Could you repeat that? Yes, clear symptoms of some kind of muscle-paralyzing drug. Haitian blow fish, not puff fish, got it. Voodoo rituals?” Lamar stares at the receiver, but then he reacts, “Voodoo rituals! Dammed! What? Zombies? What the hell! Sorry, Doctor!”
Gaspard slowly opens the door and listens.
Lamar’s fist lands on the desk, “Hell! You mean to tell me that my Deputy is now a Zombie?” Then he picks up the pencil, ready for anything the doctor might tell him. “The marks? The triangle on Polydore’s neck? Right. Laser? What the hell is that? High intensity light?” Lamar is jotting down everything the doctor tells him. He passes his left hand over his forehead to wipe away the sweat.
Gaspard has stepped into the office and closes the door silently.
“So laser light is made for precise cutting, among other things, right?” Lamar takes a deep breath and waits. “So he can eat and drink but has difficulties moving. The poison is losing its effect,” Lamar looks down at his notes. “He still can’t speak, just stares in front of him.”
Gaspard walks up to the desk and looks down at the notes.
Lamar waves him away. “Okay, Doctor, so what do you think happened to him?” There’s a moment's silence before Lamar jumps up from his chair, “Abduction? Are you sure about that?” Lamar nervously scratches his chin with his left hand, “Okay, okay, yes.”
Gaspard again tries to see what Lamar is writing down.
Lamar holds up his finger. “So the symptoms he has could be produced by a small dose of poison from a Haitian blowfish, but the marks on his neck could only be produced by something like a laser?” Lamar taps the pencil against the notepad a couple of times. “So you’re not sure? I mean, you can’t say with certainty what produced it. Now, Doctor, let me ask you one thing.” Lamar waits, “This is a personal theory. If this, what you call a laser, exists here, then it could also exist in the Soviet Union, right?” Lamar waits, “Yes, that’s very plausible, they could have stolen the technology from us. And Doctor, between us and Cuba, there is only water, right?” Lamar bites his lips, “I know it sounds like a stupid question. But Cuba is just next to Haiti, so someone could have gotten the poison in Haiti and then here.” Lamar waits again, “Okay, I understand, you don’t want to speculate about what could have happened.” Lamar bites his lips again, “Right. I got all the facts and what you deem could be the cause. Okay, thank you for calling me, Doctor.” Lamar puts down the receiver and clasps his hands.
“Sheriff, do you want some coffee?” Gaspard makes a gesture with his right thumb towards the Oster.
Lamar shakes his head, “Do we have some beer in the refrigerator?”
“I think so?”
“Get us a bottle each.”
Gaspard moves over to the small refrigerator, opens the door, takes out two bottles of Dixie, opens them, and hands one to Lamar.
Lamar has a drink of cold beer, passes his left hand over his mouth, and looks at the notes.
“Sheriff, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Lamar looks up at Gaspard, “We have a very dangerous situation here, very dangerous.”

10:47 AM, Monday, 2 May, Sheriff’s Office, Alligator.

Gaspard and Johnston look at Sheriff Lamar.
Lamar takes a deep breath and puts down the Confederate mug, “Deputies, I’m going to call the FBI.”
“The FBI?! Gaspard uncrosses his arms and takes a step forward. His eyes look confused, and his mouth is half open.
Johnston puts his hand over his mouth and slowly slides it down over his chin, “Why would you do that?”
“We’re having an, an increasingly dangerous situation here. I’ve been looking over the notes all night.”
“Is it that bad?” Gaspard has put his hand on his revolver.
“Can’t we take care of it ourselves? I mean, why do we want the Feds turning the swamp upside down?” Johnston strokes his chin again.
Lamar leans forward, picks up the telephone receiver, and dials a number that he has written down on the notepad. “We have a possible Communist infiltration in the swamp.”

10:51 AM, FBI Field Office, New Orleans.

The switchboard operator writes down the hour and clicks the button to connect the person calling. “FBI Field Office, what can I help you with?”
On the other side of the line, Lamar wonders why all women who work at switchboards have so sweet voices. “Sheriff Butch Lamar here, calling from the Bayou area. I need some help.”
“What kind of help?” The switchboard operator looks at her shiny red nails and waits.
“One of my Deputies went missing in the swamp two weeks ago, and then he was found by two black chicken farmers, whom I think are Voodoo practitioners.”
“Could you please repeat that, Sheriff?” Linda, the switchboard operator, pulses another switch to change to the loudspeaker, and then she puts her hand over her mouth to muffle her giggling.
“I said that my Deputy disappeared in the swamp, two weeks ago, he was found by two black Voodoo practitioners, and it’s also possible that he could have been abducted by Space men, did you get that?” Lamar’s angry voice fills the switchboard central. Now all the women have their hands over their mouths.
The woman next to Linda sticks out her tongue and taps herself on the head. "He's crazy." She whispers.
Linda straightens up and tries to use her professional voice, “Sheriff, I’m going to connect you to one of our field agents, so you can get some help with that, possible Voodoo abduction.”
The woman next to Linda has her hand over her mouth; she can't stop laughing and waves her other hand up and down.
“What the hell! Do you think I’m crazy? Don’t you make me come up to New Orleans to explain things to you!”
There’s a click when Linda connects him to Special Agent Anapoulus.
“Lord, that must have been the craziest person ever to call here!” Amanda, sitting three chairs away from Linda, wipes away the tears from her eyes.
Linda smiles and turns to the others, “What do you say if we go out and have something to drink when the shift ends?”

10:53 AM, Special Agent Anapoulus office.

Bring, bring, bring!
Anapoulus looks at the telephone, puts down his pen, picks up the receiver, and leans back into his office chair. “Special Agent Anapoulus, what can I help you with?” Anapoulus listens to the upset voice at the other end of the line, “Just give me a second, and I’ll start taking notes.” Anapoulus picks up the pen and takes out his notebook from the first drawer, “Okay, tell me what happened.” The voice is still upset, “Okay, Butch Lamar, Sheriff, Bayou Area, Alligator, got that. Hippies, strange lights, uhum, yes, teacher Trahan, black men with a shotgun, possibly organizing a race riot.”
Anapoulus looks at his colleague and shakes his head. “How’s that? Your Deputy, Polydore is his name, uhum, and he disappears in the swamp when he investigates the alleged presence of said race rioters and hippies,” Anapoulus shakes his head again and smiles at his colleague. His colleague, a man from Arizona, called Henry, who chain smokes when he’s nervous, gets up from his chair and walks over to Anapoulus desk to hear what they are talking about.
“So you say he was recovered on Road 57, a week after he disappeared, by two black Voodoo practitioners. How do you know that they were Voodoo practitioners?” Anapoulus shakes his head again and writes the word “Nuts” on his notepad and shows it to Henry. Henry smiles and lights a cigarette.
“Oh, thirteen black chickens in the back of the practitioner's truck, uhum, Haitian blowfish? Poison turns people into zombies, aha!” Anapoulus shakes his head again.
Now it’s Henry’s turn to shake his head.
“And according to the doctor, it could also be an Alien abduction.”
Henry laughs.
“Holes in the neck, possibly produced by a laser, anything else? What? Could you please repeat that? No. No, there’s absolutely nobody laughing at you in the background. You’re going to come up here?”
Special Agent Ortega and Bourg are also listening to the conversation, and both of them smile at each other.
“Sheriff, listen now, I got all the notes I need. I’m going to talk to my Director, and he will decide what we do about this, hum, special situation, and… What? It could also be a Communist infiltration, and they would have brought the Haitian blowfish on a Soviet submarine!”
Henry breaks into wild laughter and lights another cigarette on the old one. Bourg and Ortega turn around and laugh, too.
Anapoulus puts his hand over his mouth, “Okay. No, nobody laughing here, there must be some interference on the telephone line. Maybe the Russians have bugged the line.” Anapoulus smiles at his colleagues, who are laughing wildly. “Girl's name? What do you mean, who has a girl's name? Yes, yes, I know that the Sheriffs have extended powers. I’m well aware of that and… What do you mean… My assistant director’s name is Myers. How come?”
Anapoulus's colleagues are getting closer to hear what the mad Sheriff from the swamp has to say.
“No, his name is Myers, M, Y, E, R, S, yes. What do you mean? Possible Nazi infiltrator?”
The three colleagues slap each other on the shoulders. Henry puts out the cigarette and draws away because his stomach hurts from laughing so much.
“Meyer? Do you mean M, E, Y, E, R? A German surname, infiltrator, I think you got it all wrong. Listen up, Sheriff, I’m going to give the notes to my Assistant Director, and then he will decide what to do. Do you understand? Yes, I got your phone number! Goodbye, Sheriff!”
Anapoulus slams down the receiver, “Why, that was the craziest man that has ever called me!”
Bourg pats Anapoulus on his shoulder, “Let’s go and have a drink after work, and you’ll tell me everything about this, this Voodoo Sheriff from the swamps!”
Henry and Ortega are quick to sign up for a couple of drinks after work and some good laughs.
Anapoulus gets up from the chair with the notes in his hand, hangs his jacket over his shoulder, “Going to the Big Man!”

11:13 AM, Sheriff’s Office, Alligator.

Lamar slams down the receiver on the telephone, gets up, kicks the garbage bin, and pulls out his gun.
Johnston retreats towards the entrance door. For a second, Gaspard is considering jumping out the window.
“Dammed big city folks! Those idiots with their fancy ties and suits laughed at me!”
Johnston holds up his hands in the air, “Take it easy now, Sheriff, just easy! We don’t want any accidents here, do we?”
“You know what? I’m going to give them a chance to do things right. If they don’t, I’ll call in the boys, and we’ll do it our way! Gaspard, get the word out!”
Johnston, who doesn't know anything about the Sheriff's other activities, looks at Gaspard.
Gaspard shakes his index finger in front of Johnston.
Lamar has gotten the bottle out from the last drawer and three small glasses. “Let’s have a drink!” Lamar thinks about driving up to New Orleans in his Impala and club down a couple of those fancy Special Agents. "I'll throw them into the trunk and drive them down to the swamp." His ideas are not far from those of André. "Lots of hungry alligators around here." His thinking makes him smile. “Boys, do you want to have another drink?”
Gaspard and Johnston both look happy.

11:15 AM, Director Myers Office, FBI Field Office, New Orleans.

Anapoulus puts on his jacket and checks that his tie is straight. Looks at the notes and smiles; he knows that both he and his colleagues are going to have a good time having some drinks and laughing at this crazy Sheriff, then he knocks on the door and waits.
“Come in!”
Anapoulus steps in and closes the door behind him, “Sir, I’ve had a call, a request for help from a Sheriff’s Office.”
Myers, a middle-aged man, takes off his glasses and puts them on his large desk. “What office would that be?”
“Bayou area, small place called Alligator.”
“Well, who would have thought that Sheriff Butch Lamar himself would call here?” Myers leans back into his comfortable leather armchair.
“Do you know him?”
“Of course, he has been investigated several times for, well, race-related illegal activities,” Myers reaches forward and picks up his mug, which has a Union flag on it, and has a sip of coffee.
“What would those race-related activities be, Sir?”
Myers leans back into his executive armchair, “Back in ’64, when the President signed the Civil Rights Act, he was one of the first to start stirring things up down there on the coast. Same with the desegregation of the schools. Someone threw a stone with a paper tied to it into a school.” Myers waves his left hand in the air, “You know what it always says on those papers.”
“I can imagine.”
“When we started to investigate, well, nobody would talk to us, no testimonies, everyone was afraid or…”
“Or?”
“On the other side,” Myers has another sip of coffee and thinks that he will send for some donuts and some more coffee later.
“Two sides in that town?”
“More like one, small side is keeping all the others afraid, so they have some sort of status quo, if you don’t mess with them, obey the rules they set, then you can go on with your normal life,” Myers leans forward and puts his empty mug on the desk, “Do you want some coffee?”
Anapoulus looks at the Union mug, “Well, yes, I would. Thank you, Sir.”
Myers waves to Anapoulus to have a seat while he picks up the telephone, “Cafeteria? Myers here, could I get a refill for my coffee, another mug for an agent, and some donuts? Thank you?”
Anapoulus smiles at the thought of freshly brewed coffee and newly fried donuts.
“As I said, we have known about Sheriff Lamar for a long time. There are suspicions that he might be a Klan member.”
“A Klan member?” Anapoulus unfolds his note block and writes down what Myers has just told him.
“Grand Cyclops.”
Anapoulus looks up from the block, “Really?”
Just as Myers nods to confirm it, there’s a knock on the door, “Come in.”
In steps a woman dressed in white with a black apron, holding a tray in her hands. “Your coffee.”
“Just put it on the desk. We’ll serve ourselves. Thank you.”
After putting the tray on the desk, the woman leaves, and Myers fills Anapoulus mug, “Milk?”
“No, thank you, I’ll just have some sugar.”
Myers pushes the plate with four big donuts towards Anapoulus, “Best donuts around here.”
“I know, Sir,” Anapoulus picks up one that is covered in chocolate.
Myers picks up one with sugar on it, has a bite and a sip of coffee, “So, what did Lamar have to report?”
Anapoulus flips to the page where he has written down everything that Lamar had told him, leaving the pages stained with melted chocolate which has stuck to his fingers.

Myers eyes are becoming bigger and bigger as Anapoulus reads from the notes, shakes his head in disbelief, puts his glasses back on, and has some coffee.
Anapoulus finishes and looks at his Assistant Director.
Myers points at the coffeepot. Anapoulus nods, and Myers pours him another mug of coffee, ”Mello Joy, I think it’s the best roast you can find.”
“I agree to that, Sir.”
Myers stands up, and Anapoulus is about to do the same, but Myers waves to him to remain seated, and then he pushes the plate with the two remaining donuts towards Anapoulus¡. “You finish them.”
A happy smile appears on Anapoulus's face, and he reaches for one that has pink glazing on it. While he happily munches on it, his Assistant Director walks forth and back, but then he stops, “The man is obviously crazy.”
Anapoulus cleans his hands on his handkerchief, “Sir, I came to that conclusion myself. He even suggested that you could be, sorry for telling you, but…”
“What did he suggest?” Myers pulls on his pants suspenders.
“I don’t know if I should…”
Myers points at the last donut, “That has strawberry filling, you’ll love it. Have some coffee.”
Anapoulus has a sip of coffee and bites into the delicious donut.
“Special Agent, this is from now on an informal meeting, and I’ll explain to you why.” Myers sits down in his executive armchair, leans forward, and clasps his hands. “I think that Sheriff Lamar is up to something. He may want us to look like fools, running around in the swamp looking for spacemen.”
Anapoulus is about to have another bite, but now he’s staring at his Assistant Director.
Myer's continues. “This is an official request from a Sheriff’s Office for the Bureau’s assistance, and we will treat it as such. We can forget about the Voodoo, because that doesn’t exist, that’s what they sell to the tourists on Bourbon Street, and if there were, by any chance, naked Hippies dancing around in the swamp, well, we don’t deal with that.”
“A plan to ridicule the Bureau, Sir?”
“Right, that’s what I think. But the UFO story is completely different. I want you to go to Records and find out what the Bureau’s official policy is on such cases. Then we can get back to that crazy Sheriff and tell him to go somewhere else with his conspiracy.”
“How about his crazy idea that a Soviet submarine had landed on the coast?”
“I consider that to be the bait.”
“So we would arrive there to investigate the submarine story, and then he would go and tell the press and television about all the other things that he told us. Is that what you think?”
“Exactly.”
Anapoulus writes it all down in his notebook, looks at the mug, and then at his Assistant Director, who nods. Anapoulus finishes his coffee, stands up, and pulls out his wallet.
“Forget about it, you’re invited.”
Anapoulus smiles, “Thank you, Sir.”
“So what did he suggest about me?”
Anapoulus adjusts his tie and picks up his note block. He takes a deep breath, “He suggested that you might be a Nazi infiltrator.”
Myers puts his palms together and leans forward over the desk. There’s a moment's silence, “A Nazi infiltrator?”
Anapoulus licks his lips, “That’s what he said. He even suggested that your real name is, sorry, Sir, Meyer.”
Myers leans back against the leather, shakes his head, and smiles at Anapoulus, “You see, that’s another thing that he would tell television, some crazy Nazi infiltrator that works for the Bureau, believes a story about submarines, a Haitian blowfish, Voodoo, and naked Hippies. That would finish my career for sure.”
“On purpose?”
“Yes, somehow he must have found out that I was responsible for investigating him back in ’64, and now he wants revenge.”
“Dammed! Only a perverted mind could come up with such a plan!” Anapoulus is about to write it down, but is stopped by Myers raised hand.
“The Bureau’s reputation is at stake here. Find out what the official policy is on UFOs, and then you call him up and dismiss his request for help. And remember that this has been an informal meeting, so don’t talk too much about this.”
“I’ll do just as you told me, Director,” Anapoulus nods and puts on a serious face.

When the door has closed behind Anapoulus, Myers takes out a notebook marked “Secret” and writes down everything that Anapoulus has told him, looks at it, takes out a cigarette, and lights it. After blowing out some smoke, he picks up the telephone and spins the dial.
The hoarse voice on the other side of the line informs him that he has called the United States Atomic Commission’s Radiation Emergencies Office.
Myers whispers a phrase so that nobody who could be close to the door can hear it, to the man on the other side of the line.
“Is this an emergency?”
“Just to inform you that the Sheriff, you know where, called us and wants us to investigate the swamp.”
“Could this be a problem?”
“No, they could never find it without specialized equipment.”
“True. Keep me informed if something else turns up, considering the swamp.”
“I will.”
There’s a click and a buzz when the other man hangs up. Myers puts down the receiver and looks at his cigarette, “How the hell could Sheriff Lamar suspect it?”

11:47 AM, Special Agent Anapoulus office.

Anapoulus goes through the notes one more time, and then he decides to write down what his Assistant Director told him to do, even if it was an informal meeting, he puts the pen to his lips and thinks for a moment. His hand slowly moves over the page, he looks at the text and silently reads it to himself, “Sheriff Butch Lamar suspects that Assistant Director Myers could be a Nazi infiltrator. Possibilities?” He hides the notepad in the last drawer under some old folders.
“Remember that we’re going for drinks tonight!” Bourg gives him a big smile.
“And you’ll tell us what Myers told you,” Henry pushes down another cigarette in his full ashtray.
Anapoulus gets up from his office chair, thinks about Myers comfortable, executive, leather armchair, and puts on his jacket. “I have to go to Records.”
“Information?”
“Myers wants to know what the Bureau’s official policy on UFOs is.” Anapoulus waves to his colleagues, steps out from the office, and slowly walks towards the elevator.

There’s a soft bling when the elevator doors open. Anapoulus steps out and looks around. At the end of the hallway is the Department of Records. Slowly, without any hurry, he walks over there, looks at the opening hours that are posted next to the modern glass door, thinks about the drinks with his colleagues when all of this is finished, sighs, and pushes the door open.
There’s a long counter at the end that fills up the whole width of the room. A middle-aged brunette with glasses looks up from a sheet that she’s filling in, she adjusts her glasses, and smiles at him.
In just three paces, Anapoulus has reached the counter, “Hi, Good day, I’m, well, you look very pretty today.”
The woman pulls down her glasses and looks at him, “First time here at Records.”
“Yes!”
“Fill in this Request Form, please,” the woman’s voice is as dry as sandpaper.
Anapoulus mumbles something in Greek.
“Sir, please, fill in the Request Form.”
Anapoulus takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them, his smile is gone. “Miss.” His eyes find the name sign. “Mrs. Marston, I’m sorry for just, hum, becoming too personal with you, my mind was, hum, somewhere else. I can promise you that this will not happen again.
Mrs. Marston pulls down her glasses, looks at Anapoulus, and pushes them back up. “Special Agent, what can I do for you?”
Anapoulus waves his hand in front of his face and adjusts his tie, “Special Agent Georgios Anapoulus, and I’m here, hum, Mr. Myers, my Assistant Director wants to know what the Bureau’s official policy on UFOs is.”
Mrs. Marston blinks twice, “UFOs?”
“Yes, you heard that right, UFOs,” Anapoulus puts his hand in front of his mouth and coughs.
“Has something related to Unidentified Flying Objects occurred here, in Louisiana?” Mrs. Marston picks up a pencil and writes down the hour on it together with Anapoulus' name.
“Some dammed idiot, sorry, Sheriff called me earlier and wanted to request some, yeah, help and…”
“Where did this Sheriff call from?”
Anapoulus looks at her, “Why do you want to know that?”
“Maybe there could be Special restrictions depending on the area where such imaginary observations had been reported.”
Anapoulus slides his large, right hand over his mouth and coughs, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Mr. Anapoulus, Georgios, do you think it is the same if some, what you call an Alien…”
“Spacecraft!”
“Spacecraft, appears over the Washington Capitolium or over some Idaho potato farmer's field?”
Anapoulus lifts his eyes to the ceiling, and then he looks down, “No, I don’t think so.”
“So?”
“Down in the Bayou area, just next to the sea, a small place called Alligator.”
“Alligator,” Marston writes down the name on her notepad. Then she points her pen at the notes that Anapoulus has in his left hand, “Would that by any chance be your original notes?”
Anapoulus looks down at his notes, “Well, yes, they are, but I don’t think…”
“I could easily find what you’re looking for if I knew the content of those notes. Are they classified?”
Anapoulus looks around with big eyes and then back at Mrs. Marston, “No, they’re from an, we call it an Informal meeting, with Mr. Myers.”
Mrs. Marston gives Georgios a big smile, “Well, then there’s no problem, just notes from an, what you called, an informal meeting.” Mrs. Marston stretches her right hand towards Anapoulus.
Anapoulus hesitates for a second, but then she hands the notes, “What the heck, just some crazy Sheriff’s wild ideas, trying to compromise the Bureau.”
Marston takes the notes and quickly looks through them, “Compromise the Bureau? How?”
“Mr. Myers thinks that the Sheriff has thought this up, so we would go down to look for a UFO in a swamp and then ridicule the Bureau on TV.”
Mrs. Marston blinks, “Is that so?”
“We, the Bureau, investigated the Sheriff a couple of years ago for illegal, race-related activities.”
“Hum.”
“So now he wants to make fun of us.”
Marston turns around and walks towards the large Xerox 914 photocopier, where a sign advertises that if overheated, it can catch fire. There’s a large, red fire extinguisher next to it. “So another of those drunk swamp Sheriffs, whose brain has turned into ice cream due to the heat and the alcohol.”
Anapoulus is laughing uncontrollably.
Mrs. Marston lifts the cover and puts the first of the notes on the glass, “Please, Mr. Anapoulus, Georgios, fill in the Request Form.” Mrs. Marston pushes the button, and a light appears from under the cover.
Anapoulus fills in his name and the other relevant details, then he quickly glances at Mrs. Marston’s legs.
“Mr. Anapoulus!”
He quickly looks down at the triple sheet, wondering how she could have known.
There’s a final click from the machine. Mrs. Marston looks at the copies and smiles. She turns to Anapoulus and hands him his original notes, “Thank you.”
Anapoulus bites his lips, “I, how should I specify the request? I don’t know what’s…”
Mrs. Marston takes the Request Form from his hand and looks at it, then she picks up a pencil and starts writing, “Procedure control.”
“Procedure control, well, yes,” Anapoulus smiles at her.
He is surprised when she smiles back at him, “Please give me your extension, and when I find what you’re looking for, I’ll call you. It might take a day.” She listens to Anapoulus, and then she writes down the three-number extension.
Anapoulus points at the Xerox, “Can that machine catch fire?”
Mrs. Marston turns her head, glances at the shining photocopier, and looks back at Anapoulus, “It can make more than a hundred thousand copies per month, seven per minute, but it can overheat,” she shrugs her shoulders. “It happened once,” Marston smiles at Anapoulus.
“Hope it doesn’t happen again.”
“Things are getting so modern here. In the back, they’re installing new computers. They use magnetic tape instead of the old cards. Much, much faster.”

When Anapoulus has closed the door, Fiona Marston quickly looks around, and then she un-staples the two sheets, rushes over to the Xerox, makes a copy of each of Anapoulus notes, rushes back to the desk, staples the first copies, and puts them into a folder together with the Request Form and listens. From the back, there’s only some slamming from the technicians installing the new equipment. Fiona looks at the other two copies, folds them, and hides them in her handbag. Then she looks at the clock and feels happy that the others had just gone early for their lunch break.

10:16 AM, Tuesday, 3 May, FBI Field Office, New Orleans.

Bourg puts down his coffee on his desk, “That was a great night yesterday! You know my wife got a little angry because I went out on a Monday, but then I told her the crazy story, that Sheriff, she laughed a lot and forgave me!”
Anapoulus looks up from the papers on the desk and smiles at Bourg, “We all need to laugh now and then. I just finished that ugly thing that happened in Lafayette yesterday and…”
Bourg shakes his head and looks down at his mug.
Anapoulus looks at the General Electric and gets up from his desk with his Union mug in his hand. When the telephone rings, he looks angrily at it, puts down his mug, and picks up the receiver.
Bourg shakes his head, “No coffee, duty first.”
“Special Agent Anapoulus, what can I help you with?” He waits for a second and listens, “Oh, Mrs. Marston, yes, of course.” Anapoulus glances at his wristwatch, “I can be a Records in just, well, ten minutes. Yes. Ah! So you found the information I need?” Anapoulus looks out through the large window at the blue sky, “Okay, I’ll just have a coffee and…Should I bring it with me?” He shrugs his shoulders and glances at Bourg. “Okay, so you have something to tell me? Okay, I’ll take the coffee with me. Thank you, Mrs. Marston.”
Henry leans his right cheek on his right palm, “Mrs. Marston? Isn’t that the good-looking woman at Records?”
“She wears glasses, right?” Bourg smiles at Anapoulus.
Henry lights a cigarette, “And she’s got something to tell Special Agent Anapoulus.”
“The Bureau’s great UFO investigator! She’s got something to tell him.” Bourg blinks a Henry.
They both laugh.
Anapoulus fills up his mug, pours in some sugar, and picks up his jacket, “Well, let’s see what she has to tell me.”
“You want to come and have some barbecue with Loren and me on Sunday?” Bourg looks at Anapoulus when he opens the office door.
Anapoulus stops, “I sure would like that.” Just as he’s about to shut the door behind him, he glances back at his colleagues, “I want my steak rare on Sunday!”
Bourg holds up his thumb.

It’s the same bling as ever when the elevator door opens. Anapoulus strolls towards the Records Department's door, now he has put on his jacket. Then he changes the mug from his right hand to his left and knocks on the door.
He’s met by several smiling women. One of them waves to him to sit down on a sofa. “Mrs. Marston will be here in a minute!”
Anapoulus sits down and puts down his mug on the small coffee table next to the blue sofa.
Mrs. Marston appears from the back, where the technicians are still making a lot of noise, walks up to the desk, and waves to him to get closer.
“Good morning! So you found what I was looking for.”
“Of course, Anapoulus, Georgios.”
One of the other women giggles and looks away.
Anapoulus quickly glances at her.
“Special Agent, what do you know about those so-called UFOs?”
Anapoulus smiles at Mrs. Marston, “Only what I have seen in the movies, nothing else!”
“Have your coffee, and I'll fill you in,” Mrs. Marston opens a brown folder, which by its looks hasn’t been opened for years, and takes out some papers. “Here it is, the CIA’s Robertson Panel Report from 1953!”
“CIA?” Anapoulus puts down his mug.
“Did you know that in early 1945, General Eisenhower wrote a special report. Some of our fighters and bombers had observed strange, flying objects over Nazi Germany?”
Anapoulus shakes his head, “No, I didn’t know that?”
“Pilots referred to them as Foo Fighters.”
“Foo Fighters?”
“Yes! In the early 30’s, there were some movies about a Flash Gordon who fought an evil emperor, Ming. His rocket fighters were called Foo Fighters, that’s why the USAAF pilots chose the name Foo Fighters.”
Anapoulus leans forward over the desk and strokes his chin, “And the President, sorry, General Eisenhower, wrote a report on that? What was the conclusion?”
“There was never any conclusion. Everything got hushed up until something crashed in Roswell, Arizona, in 1947,” Mrs. Marston hands him the report.
“A crash?”
“A crash. Apparently, it was a weather balloon but at first they said, the Air Force, that it was a UFO.”
Anapoulus stares at her, “In Arizona?”
Mrs. Marston smiles and nods, “Yes! So now they needed to establish an Official Policy on how to treat this kind of, hum, incidents. The CIA used Howard Percy Robertson, who was a Professor of mathematical physics at the California Institute of Technology, to make this report. According to his panel's conclusions, this was nothing but mass hysteria.” Mrs. Marston smiles at Anapoulus, “Mass hysteria, isn’t that fun?”
“Why?”
“The Government was afraid that panic would spread if the public thought that the Soviets had some kind of miracle weapon, much like what happened in the later stages of the war when German V1 and V2 rockets rained down on London.”
“So?”
“This is the Official Policy,” Mrs. Marston gives him another big smile.
Anapoulus flips through the report, “Can I take this with me?”
Mrs. Marston puts a triple sheet in front of him and hands him a pen, “I thought you would, so I have already filled out the form; you just have to sign it.”
Anapoulus signs the form, picks up the report, and is about to open the door and leave.
“Don’t forget your mug, Special Agent!” Mrs. Marston points at the mug with the Union flag on it.
The other woman giggles.

12.05, Special Agent Anapoulus office.

Anapoulus finishes reading the report, closes it, and looks at his note block. He rests his chin on his left palm and taps the report with his pen a couple of times, “Foo Fighters, Eisenhower, and mass hysteria. Dammed, I never heard about that, but Marston seems to know about it.”
“What’s that?” Henry lights another Marlboro. “Something interesting?”
Anapoulus turns his head towards Henry and shrugs his shoulders, “No. Just read the, well, let’s call it the Bureau’s Official Policy about these, so-called UFO phenomena.”
“And?”
“Nothing special. Just another case of mass hysteria.”
“Like when the Beatles played here in America the first time?”
Anapoulus laughs, “Exactly!” He picks up the telephone receiver and dials a three-number extension, “Calling the old man.”
Henry blows out some smoke and looks down at the file on his desk.
“Sir? Anapoulus here. I, yes, I have what seems to be the Official Policy for what we talked about yesterday.” He waits, draws in some air, and then he starts to explain to Myers, “Um, Mrs. Marston, at Records, there's a CIA report that treats all of this Outer space phenomena as mass hysteria.” Silence. “Yes, that’s right, mass hysteria. It was written by Professor Robertson in 1953.” Silence. “Yes, an expert panel. This seems to have been the Government’s view since then.” Silence. “Some of the sightings have occurred close to Mercury, Nevada.” Anapoulus waits, “Yes, Mercury, close to the Nevada Proving Ground, the nuclear tests, Sir.”
Henry stops reading and looks at Anapoulus.
Anapoulus scratches his neck, “Yes, Sir. Exactly. Some of the sightings could have been our own secret experiments.” Silence. “Yes. That’s why they don’t want to confirm them, the Air Force, I mean.” Silence. “Of course, the Deputy could have been paralyzed by a snake bite. Do you want me to get in contact with the Houma Hospital?” Silence. “Okay, Sir. I understand. I’ll call up the Sheriff in the afternoon and tell him that if he doesn’t come up with some hard evidence, we will not investigate. Yes, yes, I’ll refer to the Official Policy.” Silence. “Yes, I have the same opinion. Mrs. Marston, Records, I told her why I made this request, and she said that the man’s brain most probably had turned into ice cream due to excessive alcohol abuse and the heat from the swamp.”
Henry breaks out into loud laughter, and on the other side of the line, Myers is laughing too.
“Yes, Sir, that’s what she told me, ice-cream,” Anapoulus laughs a little too. “Yes, Sir, I’ll call the crazy Sheriff in the afternoon. Thank you, Sir, case closed.” There’s a click and a buzz on the line. Anapoulus hangs up the receiver and smiles at Henry, “How about some lunch, Henry?”
“Oh, I’ll go later. I have to finish this file about that new drug that is flooding the streets of San Francisco and is reported to have appeared here, too.”
“What’s it called?”
“LSD.”
“I never heard of it.” Anapoulus takes out his wallet from the first drawer, puts it in his jacket's inside chest pocket, and swings the jacket over his left shoulder.
Henry takes a deep breath and puts out the cigarette. “There’s a rumour that the Agency, you know, the same guys that wrote that report,” Henry points at the Robertson Report. “Well, rumour has it that they have been experimenting with LSD as far back as ’53.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Remember how they, well, the OSS brought over all the Nazis that are working on our space program now.” He glances at his wristwatch, “But now it’s time to eat. See you later!” Anapoulus disappears out the door.

As always, there’s a soft bling when the elevator doors open. Anapoulus steps out and strolls towards the cafeteria. For a second, he thinks about what he’s going to have, and then almost instantly an image of the Cafeteria’s juicy tuna sandwich materialises in his mind, together with a cold beer. Why not? The case is closed.
Anapoulus feels happy, picks up a tray, and puts it down on the tray rail. He effortlessly pushes it, stops, and takes out a fresh, delicious “Mediterranean Tuna Sandwich with Olives and Oregano” from a shelf and puts it on the tray. A smile appears on his face when he looks at the cold, damp, red, and white label, “Hello JAX!” Anapoulus puts the bottle of beer on the tray, and then a large, cold, thick glass lands upside down on the tray, next to the bottle. He happily rolls the tray towards the check-out.
A woman dressed in a blue and white dot dress with a triangular apron, blond dyed hair, and pink lipstick smiles at him as she presses the buttons on the cash register, “That’ll be a dollar fifty-seven cents.”
Anapoulus hands her two dollars. She puts the change on the tray with the receipt and opens the bottle. “Have a nice day.”
Anapoulus puts the cents into the glass marked “tips”, next to the check-out, waves his hand and smiles at the woman, “Thank you!”
He wanders off to one of the oval, red, plastic tables with four green chairs next to a large window with a view of the city. Anapoulus sits down and looks at the sky before biting into the sandwich. The tuna, lettuce, egg, and mayonnaise melt in his mouth. He leans back, has a drink of cold beer, and thinks about the rare steaks on Sunday.

Mrs. Marston looks up from her notebook. Anapoulus is not aware of her. She looks down and slowly writes a note. She looks at it and silently reads it. “Saturday, 7 May, drive down to Alligator and investigate. To do: find a place to stay. Hotels?. Maximum discretion. Tourist?” She glances at Anapoulus, looks at the woman at the check-out, thinks, and then she smiles, “Recording the old rural Louisiana, yes, that’s my cover story.”
She picks up the tray, stands up, and silently walks towards the exit, where she deposits the tray. Then she has a last glance at Anapoulus, “Mass hysteria, if you only know what I saw in Nevada.”

4:22 PM, Sheriff’s Office, Alligator.

When the telephone rings, Lamar reaches forward and picks up the receiver. Johnston has spilled some coffee on his boots, and Gaspard stands up and moves towards the desk.
“Sheriff Lamar here!” He scratches his chin nervously, and his eyes are moving from one side to another. They focus on a fly. Lamar’s eyes follows the fly while listening, “Yes, yes!” Lamar holds the receiver with both his hands. Gaspard draws nearer to hear what the man on the other side says. Lamar waves him away.
Johnston pours himself some more coffee and looks happy.
Lamar’s fist lands on the desk with a loud bang. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Johnston spills some more coffee on his boots. He puts down the mug and cleans his boots with his handkerchief.
“What?” Lamar’s fist lands on the desk again, and his Swiss cheese coloured hat falls down on the floor, where it receives a kick and flies up in the air. “Now you listen to me! You, you Special Agent Ana, Ana. What? Yes! You with that girl's name! Shut up!” There’s silence in the room while Lamar stares at the phone. “Mass hysteria? Do I sound hysterical? What the hell did you just say?” Lamar kicks his hat again, and the fly retreats out the open window. “Do you want me to drive up to New Orleans and have a little talk with you?”
Gaspard fingers on his ’38 Police Special. He knows all too well what one of Lamar’s talks is all about.
“Official Policy’” Lamar’s eyes roll around. “What do you mean? You’re not going to do anything?” Sweat is pouring from his forehead. “Incoherent? Of course, I know what the word means! It means…” Lamar waves to Gaspard to come closer.
Gaspard whispers to Lamar, “Something that doesn’t make sense, that’s what it means.”
“It means something that doesn’t make sense! That’s what it means!” Lamar’s fist lands on the desk again. “Okay,” Lamar wipes away the sweat from his forehead. “Of course it makes sense. It could have been a Voodoo abduction!” Lamar’s face resembles that of a mad bulldog. “Snake bite? No dammed snake makes three holes in the neck of a man, do you think I’m stupid?”
Johnston moves closer to the door, just in case.
Bang! Lamar’s fist lands on the desk again, and his hat gets another kick, “Listen to me, you little shit!” Lamar listens with his mouth open, “What do you mean? Is it a felony to threaten a Federal Agent? I haven’t threatened anyone! Shut up! You dumb, office suit idiot!”
There’s a click, and the line goes dead. Lamar stares at the receiver before throwing it violently on the desk and kicking his Swiss cheese hat again. Lamar opens and shuts his mouth several times, then he falls back into his office chair like an empty pack of cinema popcorn.
“Gaspard,” his voice is a whisper. “Get the bottle.”
Gaspard opens the cupboard where the coffee brewer is and takes out a bottle of Sazerac Rye whiskey and three small glasses. The fourth glass stays in the cupboard. He distributes the glasses on the desk and pours a finger of whiskey in each.
Lamar gets up from the chair and lifts his glass, “Santé!”
All three of them finish the whiskey in one drink and put their glasses on the desk. Gaspard fills them up again. Now they just sip on the whiskey.
“They were laughing at me up there in New Orleans,” Lamar’s voice is dry as sand. “That Special Agent, the one with the odd girl name, laughed at me.” Lamar stares into nowhere, “He said that we’re all suffering from mass hysteria here. Lamar shakes his head and has a sip of whiskey, “They are not going to do anything unless we can find some, what he called, hard evidence of strange activities in the swamp.”
“So what do we do?”
Lamar looks at Gaspard, “I want you to call the boys, tell them to come here on Saturday, early. We’ll arrange a search party.”
“And if we find something, Sheriff?”
Lamar glances at Johnston, “From now on, we handle this ourselves. I won’t call those idiots at the FBI anymore. If one of those blacks had his rights infringed, they would sure as hell be here but when my, a white Deputy is found like a zombie, then they laugh at us.”
Lamar puts down his glass and signals to Gaspard to fill up the glasses.