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creatures are not in fact extraterrestrials but perhaps, as has been suggested, highly evolved humans from the distant future whose DNA is corrupt and can no longer breed so they harvest ours to take back to their time to maintain the human stock so the race will not face extinction?”
    Once we tuned into what she was saying, everyone stopped talking. We just stood there with mouths hanging open. This was the Iris Phelan we did not know, the closet UFOlogist, the Fox Mulder of the geriatric set. The Iris we knew cranked her TV so fucking loud it interfered with satellite communications and you could hear exactly what movie was on TCM at one in the morning even if you were a block away. The Iris we knew planted tulips and daffodils, hung her flag out every morning and belonged to three or four old lady church groups. Apparently, we knew nothing about her.
    “That’s enough,” David told her. “I mean, really, I’ve had my fill tonight. Cables from the sky and alien abductions. Of all the silly comic book nonsense.”
    Iris toasted him with her beer. “Not saying it’s so, son, I’m just speculating as I imagine most are this dark night. So settle down. No need to get your tit caught in the wringer over it.”
    Billy Kurtz started laughing. When he stopped, he said, “I don’t think it’s bullshit at all. I know Jon. He teaches science. He’s smart. And Bonnie…well, maybe she ain’t so smart, but she’s no liar.”
    “That’s right,” Bonnie said, comfortable with her husband’s appraisal.
    There was even more arguing then, Ray and David on the con side, Bonnie and Billy and me on the pro side. Iris quoted facts and figures. Lisa Ebler, apparently disgusted by her husband’s performance, retreated to one of the fire pits to roast marshmallows with her sons and some of the more rational neighbors. Many of the others ringed around us, intrigued.
    I heard David out yet again.
    He was annoying the hell out of me with his flat-earth science, but I listened even though he kept tossing in digs about me and suggesting—more or less—that Bonnie and I had been playing house in my pickup. I listened. I was on my last nerve, but I listened. My wife was missing and I was worried about that and worried about my daughter across the sea, but I listened. In the end, as much as he tried to espouse rational thinking, realism, and cold hard logic, it all failed him because he simply could not explain what happened to Kathy, to Frankovich, or to Al Peckman. And that was the hole that let in the water that sunk his boat every time.
    But I began to understand him and I had more sympathy. He was scared. Hell, he was terrified. He had a young family. He and his wife were just getting going. He had two boys over there and if any of what we said was true, then the future looked not only bleak but downright ugly. He couldn’t face that. When people are scared of something, I’ve noticed, they either joke about it or flatly deny its existence. It’s the only way to keep a grip on their sanity and I think we’ve all done it.
    “Listen,” I finally said to him. “This isn’t getting any of us anywhere. So let’s just put it to the acid test. Let’s hop in my truck and I’ll show the damn things to you. Is that reasonable?”
    “That would be the basis of the scientific method,” Iris said. “Once a phenomena is witnessed, questions can be asked and a hypothesis put forward.”
    I, again, just stared at her. Where had this Iris Phelan been all these years?
    “No,” Lisa Ebler said. “No, David, you can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
    “I have to. They’re trying to make me look like a fool.”
    “You don’t need our help,” Bonnie said.
    “The whole idea is a waste of time,” Ray said.
    Iris rapped her beer bottle on her walker. “Waste of time? Well, listen to me. I watch the Weather Channel every day. Not much else to do when you’re old and alone and no one ever bothers to stop by,” she said. “And I tell