Klass II

Joe Bob and Elbert are two brothers who own a farm out in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Or maybe it’s Iowa. Or New Mexico. But they have a farm, they’re going broke, they got debts and maybe like to quaff too much down at the local saloon. They enjoy raising hell when they can, and may or may not have lead “colorful” lives.

One morning, both brothers, still sweaty, dirty and stinky from the previous day’s farming, high-tail it in their beat up Dodge pick-up to the office of the town constable. It appears late last night, as they’re finishing up their chores but before they can break out the beers, Joe Bob spots a weird light in the sky.

He runs inside the house a-hollerin’ for Elbert to come out and see this. They both rush out at the same time, nearly taking out the door frame, upend themselves in the mud that surrounds the house, truck, barns and silos, get up and stare agape at what they see. A hundred yards away, just at the nearby orchard tree-line, are three lights, all different colors and swirling and spinning, but they’re attached to something solid, and that something solid is hovering there, maybe checking out the boys’ cattle for some mutilating, maybe checking out the boys’ themselves.

Elbert slaps his head, suddenly remembering the conveniently loaded camera they left in the kitchen. He races in, taking another bath in the mud, and by the time he’s re-joins his brother the mysterious object is still there; in fact, it’s even closer. The brothers cower in fear, Elbert snapping a photo or two, and suddenly a beam of light shines down upon them. Screaming, they flee for the safety of the four walls of the house their great-great-great grand-pappy built after the War Between the States.

Joe Bob peers out the window, the one that’s not broken, and sees something shiny and up-to-no-good messing about out by the outhouse. He slaps his brother, who drops the camera but reaches up above the mantle and grabs the conveniently loaded twelve-gauge. Elbert leaps up and blasts out that good window, firing buckshot into the outhouse and the silvery invader who was fixing to come closer.

An hour passes, then two, three, and the boys, eyeballing cautiously the lonely moonlit pastures about them, see no further signs of the strange visitor. In fact, the lights in the sky are gone, too. Joe Bob assesses the situation and the two agree to commence the high-tailing.

The sheriff launches an investigation, hauling his great big belly out to the farm the next morning with his two young and inexperienced deputies. They see nothing – wait! Out in the orchard is a ring of burnt vegetation. It’s proof! The spaceship the boys saw the night previous was true! Within a day or two the local papers have the story, and in a day more, the national news. The case receives mucho street cred at all the annual UFO conventions, and several books are written about the bizarre case by years’ end. The boys go on some local talk shows, but after some discrepancies over polygraph tests – did they take them and pass, or not? – the media lose interest in the case and we lose interest in the brothers.

Then, the case comes across the desk of our friend, Philip J. Klass.

What does he do?

He does what just about everyone else involved in the “sighting” failed to do.

First, he takes all the books, articles, and taped TV interviews done by the boys and about the boys, and sets them aside. Then, he calls the sheriff, and gets a copy of the original police report. The one taken when the details of the sighting would be fresh in the boys’ minds. These are the raw data of his investigation. This he studies. He develops an accurate timeline of the events, as well as maps of the farm, the lands around the farm, and the route to town. These he studies for discrepancies, anything puzzling, any “holes” in the boys’ tale. Objectively, because he truly has not formed an opinion yet. If everything seems to make sense, he moves on.

Next, he calls and gets the weather report for the night in question. It was clear, cloudless. Okay, so he moves on. Full moon? No, first quarter. May be relevant, maybe not. He calls an astronomer buddy, who consults a chart, and says, “Why yes, Venus was present, as was Jupiter, in the constellation Taurus.” Phil thanks them and consults his map and timeline. Venus would have “set” long before the incident, but Jupiter would be prominent in the sky. In their line-of-sight, too, given Klass’ map of the area. And it was a cool night after a hot day, so thermal convection may have caused rippling effects in the atmosphere and effected the boys’ sighting of Jupiter, making it appear as if it was shimmering or changing color.

Consulting his map with a state atlas, Klass spots a nearby airport fifteen miles to the west. A quick call determines that helicopters are flown out of there to a couple of major cities in the east. Yup. Joe Bob and Elbert’s farm is flyover country.

The sheriff’s report tells him that the only thing found at the outhouse was one buckshot-demolished outhouse. Forensics – if you could label this part of the investigation as “forensics” – yields nothing otherworldly. Klass dismisses this part of the case.

How about that ring of burnt vegetation they found out there? Samples were sent a month after the initial report to a reputable chemical analysis company in a nearby city. Klass scans the report. Nothing unusual, except high levels of zinc. Nothing radioactive, a major concern of Joe Bob, who fears he’s now sterile. Now zinc, that’s telling. Especially on a farm. Pesticides, perhaps? A little further research into Nowhere town records yields a deed from the boy’s grandfather’s time. It appears there was a silo located at the edge of the woods thirty-some years ago. Did it hold some fertilizer or pesticide that contained zinc? Perhaps. The most logical explanation is the ring of dead vegetation is a result of the silo that used to stand there.

How about Elbert’s two photos? Funny, Elbert seems to have misplaced the negatives. Hmmm. He did send a copy of the photo to the local newspaper, and an early book on the incident had a grainy shot of a blurry white blob against an inky black vagueness, but now Elb is charging money for copies. Not too convincing.

It seems the boys initially took a polygraph test a week after reporting the incident (at the behest of the local newspaper), but now they won’t take another for Klass. This Klass learns from a correspondence with the boys’ lawyer.

Conclusion: The boys, possibly after a beer or two, saw Jupiter, decided to snap a few pics of it, spotted a low-flying helicopter, thought a little more, blasted their outhouse door apart, and, remembering the old silo ring, decided to fabricate a little white lie about a saucer landing on their farm. Maybe for the money, maybe for the fame, or perhaps just a little local publicity that’ll get them some beers bought for them at the town tavern.

Regardless, it was not a visit from Zeta Reticulans.