At Roswell's town limits, a wildly-driven '58 Chevy half-ton painted a battered but restful robins-egg blue slewed to a reckless halt before Babs' Home Cookin' Cafe.
A distraught middle-aged driver clad in a paunchy, pearl studded shirt, Lee Riders and a dusty Stetson burst in with a lunatic air that shocked the early-bird special regulars. They knew him to be taciturn, unexcitable, reliable - the ideal Marlboro Man.
Today, he teetered dangerously on worn boot heels, sweating, panting and wildeyed before them. Blinking rapidly, he licked red dust from his chattering teeth with a careful, parched tongue. He'd been born and bred in these parts, and had stayed here all his life, except for his volunteer patriotic duty with Uncle Sam's Pacific forces in World War Two. He knew the full import of what he he was about to say, but he knew he had to do it. He drew a ragged breath and began yelling in lurching fits and starts.
"I jist seen Jesus! ... 'Bout a million angels comin' right out of the sky! ... Floated down like confetti! ... There was this beautiful sound! .. Then they sorta sped up and disappeared! ... There was this other big noise, like that ammo dump I saw 'splodin' back on Guadalcanal when I was fightin' in the Big One, or somethin'! ... Then I saw one a' them goddamn flying saucers! ... It jist hung there for a long time ... They finally seen me lookin' at 'em, they took off faster'n scalded lightnin'...!
One last deep breath, then he dropped the biggie in a gasping rush.
"Then them goddam black copters started whumpin' in, jist like last time!"
Nobody moved for long seconds. They glumly eyed the driver, now sagging on Babs' ancient cash register, trying to catch his ragged breath.
An ancient cowboy at the counter deliberately finished chewing, swallowed his eggs, drained his coffee, and slowly picked up his smouldering rollie from the nearby ashtray. He examined the faintly glowing tip with a jaundiced eye, and jammed it into the more heavily nicotine-stained side of his mouth. When he finally spoke, it was a laconic mutter. Yet the silent patrons of Babs' heard him clearly as the trumpets of Judgment Day:
"Heeere we go again..."
The disgusted orange loogie he hawked on the black and white linoleum behind the counter splattered loud as a sonic boom.
Roswell, not long after
